.IV.

Fort Sheldyn, The South March, Republic of Siddarmark

“Shit.”

As a reaction to a scout’s report, it left a little to be desired, Colonel Phylyp Mahldyn reflected, but it did sum up the situation well. And it seemed so damned unfair.

He sat for a long, still moment, eyes focused on something only he could see, as he digested the news. Lieutenant Zherald Ahtkyn stood waiting patiently, his prematurely aged face worried.

But not worried enough, Mahldyn thought grimly. The boy thinks I’m going to produce another miracle, but it would take an archangel to get us out of this one.

He winced inwardly at his own thought. It was hard sometimes, even for him, not to wonder if the fiery sermons of the “Sword of Scheuler’s” Schuelerite priests—and the even more inflammatory rhetoric of the rabble-rousing lay preachers—might not be right about the calamities to be visited upon the Republic if it failed to throw off its heretical leadership. There were times he’d actually wanted to believe that, wanted to absolve himself of the thankless task of somehow holding the Republic’s authority together. The thought of abandoning the struggle, and of knowing it was what God wanted him to do, was almost more seductive than he could stand at times. Unfortunately, he was a man who took his duty and his sworn oath seriously, and he’d seen the measure of the men who called themselves “God’s warriors” in the destruction of the small towns which had once been strung along the St. Alyk and the Seridahn. Cheraltyn, Traigair, Evyrtyn … he was sick unto death of all the evidence of “God’s warriors’” holiness.

The South March population had never been dense. The entire vast province had boasted barely a third of the inhabitants of Old Province, alone. Even now, much of the land between the Branath and Shingle Mountains and the Dohlaran frontier had yet to be prepared for human occupation as the Book of Sondheim and Book of Truscott required, although the unconsecrated areas had been shrinking steadily before the current madness. Except for the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal, there’d been little to attract human settlement inland from the Gulf of Mathyas, anyway, until the Desnairians had invaded Shiloh—then the Republic’s frontier province—the better part of two centuries ago. That had touched off the succession of bitter wars with the Desnairian Empire which had been brought to a close only by the Church’s creation of the Grand Duchy of Silkiah as a buffer zone.

The Dohlarans had been wise enough to stay out of that conflict, although they seemed to be making up for it now. But the fighting between the Republic and Desnair had discouraged settlement in the area until it finally guttered out. More and more Siddarmarkians had been pouring into the South March since the Church had imposed peace, yet even today there were—or had been—no true cities and few towns. The South March had been a place of villages and peaceful, isolated farms, trying to forget the bloodshed which had swept across this very ground. Its citizens had been far more concerned with Sondheim’s Law and Truscott’s Law than with tensions within the Church or worries over the long-quiescent border. They’d traded across the Dohlaran frontier into Reskar and Thorast, intermarried with Dohlaran and Silkiahan families, and done their best to raise their own families in accordance with the Writ.

And then the world had gone mad, and not even the peaceful, sleepy South March had been spared.

Mahldyn’s jaw clenched as he remembered the stomach-churning ruins of Cheraltyn and the mutilated bodies not just of fellow soldiers but of two-thirds of the town’s civilians, as well. That had been the worst, he thought. But only because it had also been the first—his first. Because it was where he’d inherited responsibility for the entire area, and because it had been the army’s job to protect the citizens of Cheraltyn, and they’d failed.

I couldn’t have stopped it even if I’d been in command and known it was coming, he thought dismally. And it wasn’t Colonel Suwail’s fault, either. We were both too busy dealing with the mutineers in our own commands, trying to figure out what the hell was going on and who we were supposed to be taking orders from to think about ambushes. And that was before the winter … and before the semaphore stations went down. No wonder it’s gotten only worse since!

He’d lost over half his own 110th Regiment in the mutiny’s savage internal fighting. A third of his casualties had been among the troopers who’d stayed loyal to their oaths, another ten percent had been simple desertions … and the rest had been killed by their loyal comrades in arms in the fighting. At that, he’d been more fortunate than a lot of officers. His current regiment was at almost full strength, all of them regulars, although it had been patched together from the remnants of three pre-revolt regiments, including the survivors of Suwail’s 93rd Pikes. Between the 110th, Colonel Vyktyr Mahzyngail’s 14th South March Militia, and the Provisional Company he’d formed out of various odds and sods, he actually had a bit more than two regiments’ paper strength, but he was over strength in pikes and badly under strength in arbalesters … and he had less than a hundred musketeers, all of them with matchlock smoothbores.

That wasn’t much in the face of so much madness.

What happened? he wondered for no more than the ten-thousandth time. How could people who were neighbors, friends—family—turn on each other this way? Where did all the hatred come from?

Perhaps he should be asking other questions. Like why he himself and the men who’d somehow hung together under his command hadn’t renounced their oaths to the Republic when the Grand Inquisitor proclaimed the Lord Protector’s excommunication? Like what stubborn, stupid, idealistic concept of duty had kept him and his men on their feet, in uniform, trying to protect the civilians around them from those following the proclaimed orders of God’s own priests?

He couldn’t answer those questions, either, but whatever the answers might have been, they weren’t going to matter much longer.

“All right,” he said finally, his eyes refocusing on young Ahtkyn’s hunger-gaunt face. “It would’ve been nice to have a little more warning, but what we have is what we have. Pass the word to Colonel Mahzyngail and Major Fairstock. I want everyone we’ve got ready to march within thirty minutes. Tell Colonel Mahzyngail that if that’s not enough time to set all the charges, we’ll just have to leave them.” He smiled thinly. “I don’t suppose letting them have the shell’s going to make all that much difference in the end.”

“Yes, Sir!” Lieutenant Ahtkyn slapped his chest and turned to hurry from the office.

Mahldyn sat looking around it for a few more moments. Then he sighed, climbed out of his chair, and took his breastplate from the armor tree.

At least we got Syrk and the settlements between here and St.Alyk’s evacuated … mostly. There shouldn’t be too many refugees to slow us down. That’s something.

He started buckling the breastplate’s straps and wondered if he’d be alive to unbuckle them that evening.