.III.

Serabor,The Sylmahn Gap, Old Province, Republic of Siddarmark

The distant rumble wasn’t thunder, and the flashes reflecting from the low-lying cloud to the north weren’t lightning, either. General Kynt Clareyk, Baron Green Valley and commanding officer, 2nd Brigade (reinforced), Charisian Expeditionary Force, knew exactly what both of them actually were as he watched the flickering illumination while the lead barge of his brigade glided towards the improvised landing below the dam at Serabor.

He didn’t know how Trumyn Stohnar’s men had managed to stop Bahrnabai Wyrshym’s army. Over half of them were dead. Colonel Wyllys was still on his feet, somehow, but he was one of only two of Stohnar’s original regimental commanders who hadn’t been killed or wounded, and his regiment hadn’t been as fortunate as him. Of the twenty-two hundred men he’d led to the Sylmahn Gap last winter, two hundred and sixty-five were still alive, and ninety of them were wounded. Of his company commanders only young Hainree Klairynce had survived, commanding the single quarter-strength company which was all that remained of the 37th.

Yet that company was still up there, where those guns were flashing, hunkered down as part of the tattered reserve General Stohnar had managed to constitute out of the broken bits and pieces of his regulars and the more brutally winnowed militia. Wyllys commanded that reserve—all eight hundred men of it—while Colonel Fhranklyn Pruait of the 76th held the entrenchments.

Well, him and Commander Tyrwait, Green Valley amended, and shook his head. He hadn’t really thought he was going to get here in time. And he wouldn’t have, if not for Lieutenant Commander Shain Tyrwait and his naval artillerists.

He looked down through one of Owl’s SNARCs as the big barge squeaked against the fenders. The stabbing flashes of rifles and the bigger, fiercer eruptions of cannon and the shrapnel shells streaking in both directions showed clearly to the SNARC’s sensors, despite the overcast. A lot more shells were being fired south than north, he thought grimly, and reliable fuses or not, the solid wall of guns Nybar, Vynair, and Bahrkly had assembled almost hub-to-hub were steadily killing Stohnar’s men and ripping his earthworks apart. But they weren’t having it all their own way, either, and Green Valley’s eyes glittered with approval as one of Tyrwait’s thirty-pounder shells found an Army of God ammunition wagon. The spectacular explosion killed half the crews of a Temple Loyalist twelve-pounder section … and fresh gunners advanced grimly to the pieces, stepping over the dead and writhing bodies of their predecessors.

The reasonably dry ground in front of Stohnar’s entrenchments was heaped with the bodies of men who’d died assaulting the earthworks. There were a lot of bodies out there, Green Valley thought with bleak, grim satisfaction. More than there should have been, although it was hard to fault Wyrshym or his divisional commanders.

They’re still making it up as they go along, and it’s not their fault they’re making mistakes. They’re not making as many of them as I’d wish, for that matter. And one of those mistakes they’re not making is how important Serabor is to them. They don’t like losing men any more than anyone else, even if they do believe every one of them’s going straight to Heaven, but they know they have to have the Sylmahn Gap if they want Old Province this year. They’re willing to pay the price to get it, too, and unless something—like Second Brigade, perhaps—changes the equation, they’ve got more than enough manpower to grind Stohnar away and take it. They’re in the same position Grant was at Petersburg, and the fact that they don’t like it hasn’t kept them from doing it anyway. But at the same time, they’re determined not to lose any more men than they have to, and their learning curve’s a hell of a lot steeper than Europe’s was in 1914. The only question is whether or not it’s steep enough because the truth is, both sides still have a lot to learn. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone, when you think about it.

Neither Siddarmark nor the Army of God had been given any yardstick by which to measure the lethality of rifles and combat until they actually used them for the first time. So it was hardly surprising they’d extrapolated from their experience with smoothbore matchlocks, treated the rifles as simply more rapidly firing, more reliable versions of the weapons they already knew and understood. But rifles weren’t smoothbore matchlocks, and both sides’ doctrine of standing in the open in close formation, pouring volleys at the other, had resulted in enormous casualties.

Faster learners than their officers (since personal survival tended to be the fastest teacher known to man), the infantrymen on both sides had discovered the wonderful virtues of the shovel, although neither the Army of God nor the Republican Army had yet evolved anything like the Imperial Charisian Army’s policy of digging in every single night in the field. In the final analysis, though, a man armed with a muzzle-loader had little choice but to stand upright if he was going to fire at the enemy, and officers on both sides had been trying to figure out how to do that and survive.

Well, we’ll just have to show them, won’t we? Green Valley thought. It’ll be interesting to see how willing they are to learn the lesson, though. Our tactical doctrine puts an awful lot of the responsibility on noncoms and junior officers, and senior officers have a problem when it comes to giving up tactical control of their own units and trusting some nineteen- or twenty-year-old lieutenant to make the right call. Hard to blame them, really, and there were enough Chisholmians Ruhsyl had to boot before we got it right, for that matter!

Up until a few five-days ago, he’d have given odds Siddarmark would accept the new reality more quickly than the Army of God, but he’d acquired a very healthy respect for the Temple Loyalists’ adaptability after watching through the SNARCs as they forged across western and northern Siddarmark in a tide of fire. They were tough-minded, those division-commanding bishops, and a lot more willing to think critically about their own doctrine than he’d expected. Probably because so many of them had played major roles in evolving that doctrine in the first place in conjunction with Allayn Maigwair.

And Maigwair’s been an unpleasant surprise, too, Green Valley admitted. Everything I ever heard about him suggested he should still be trying to figure out how to shoot pikes out of twelve-pounders, but he’s put a lot of thought into equipping and organizing this Army of God of his. And given the fact that he doesn’t have Merlin and Owl as advisors, he’s done one hell of a job, too. He made mistakes, but they were smart mistakes, more often than not.

In fact, the baron admitted grimly as the mooring lines were made fast and he stepped across onto the rickety dock, if not for Charis, the Army of God would have swept across Siddarmark like the scourge of God before first snowfall. There was no question in his mind of that … or that something like it might still happen.

They’d play hell holding the Siddarmarkians down, especially with all the hate-fodder the Inquisition’s generating, but Merlin’s right. Left to their own devices, with no one interfering on either side, they’d reach Siddar City by the end of September.

Except, he told himself harshly, that that wasn’t going to happen.

“General Green Valley?” an exhausted-looking lieutenant greeted him with a salute.

“Yes.” Green Valley touched his own chest, acknowledging the salute, and the lieutenant seemed to sway for a moment.

“Lieutenant Dahglys Sahlavahn,” he said. “I’m General Stohnar’s senior—well, I guess I’m his only aide, now.” He smiled mirthlessly. “He sent me ahead to greet you. He asked me to tell you he’ll be here in about another hour and a half. He should be on his way back from consulting with Colonel Pruait by now.”

“I understand.”

Green Valley looked back over his shoulder to where the second and third barges in the convoy were gliding towards shore. Then he looked back at Sahlavahn.

“I’ve got the better part of thirteen thousand infantry and eighty guns coming ashore in the next two or three hours, Lieutenant. I need someplace to put them.”

“Yes, Sir!” Lieutenant Sahlavahn’s exhausted face was transfigured. “I don’t know how we’ll be able to get all of those guns to the front, Sir—we’ve only got about six or seven thousand yards of frontage—but by God, they’ll give those bastards a headache when we do! And I’ve got someplace you can park them and mate them up with their draft animals in the meantime. Uh … you did bring draft animals, didn’t you, Sir?”

“Yes, Lieutenant, we did,” Green Valley assured him with a faint smile.

“I figured you had, Sir, but—”

The young man shrugged, and Green Valley nodded.

“Always better to make certain,” he agreed. “Now, there’s one other thing I’m going to need, as well as to meet with General Stohnar.”

“Yes, Sir?”

“I need someone who knows the lizard paths above the Gap. I’m going to have to get some of my men up there to make this work the way I have in mind.”

“Up in the mountains, Sir?” Sahlavahn looked dubious, and Green Valley nodded again, more firmly.

“Trust me, Lieutenant.” He showed his teeth, a white gleam reflecting the artillery muzzle flashes bouncing off the clouds. “If it sounds crazy to you, it’ll sound crazy to them. But I think you and General Stohnar are going to like the way it works out a hell of a lot more than they will.”