.X.

The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands

It was very quiet in the council chamber.

The proverbial lull before the storm, Rhobair Duchairn thought, gazing across the table at Zhaspahr Clyntahn. I can’t believe he’s not already ranting and raving.

The Grand Inquisitor had been positively genial for the last several months as the Army of God moved up to the Siddarmarkian frontier and then went crunching across it with fire and the sword. He hadn’t even complained too much about Duchairn’s diversion of a full quarter of Mother Church’s logistic capability to feed the starving … and evacuate as many as possible of her children to safety in the Temple Lands.

There’d been a few setbacks, of course. The blunting of the Dohlaran thrust towards Thesmar, for example. But even that had been only temporary, since it had merely diverted Ahlverez into Cliff Peak to assist Kaitswyrth’s campaign—which obviously had caught the heretics completely by surprise—while the Desnairian army, coming up through Silkiah, could deal with any problems in the South March.

But for the most part, there’d been only triumph. Tarikah, Westmarch, Icewind, New Northland, Mountaincross, Hildermoss, two-thirds of the South March, and now Cliff Peak had been secured for Mother Church, and Clyntahn’s inquisitors had fanned out behind the advancing army to ferret out any sniff of heresy. All the criticism of his Sword of Schueler and his decision to settle the “Siddarmarkian problem” once and for all had been proven wrong as Mother Church’s armies ripped away more than a third of the Republic’s territory in mere months. And the vaunted Siddarmarkian army—the Army of the Republic, which had loomed like a titan across the mainland realms for so long—had shattered like glass. Torn by mutiny and desertion, hammered by starvation, and then confronted by hundreds of thousands of men armed with the rifles Clyntahn had insisted Siddarmark not be allowed to produce, it had died or fled at the Army of God’s approach.

Of course, the Inquisition’s reign of terror in western Siddarmark could only further enrage the heretics, and Duchairn wondered if Clyntahn had really considered the Charisians’ declared policy to hang or shoot all inquisitors on the spot. Did Zhaspahr think the acts of men like Wylbyr Edwyrds were likely to soften Charis’ policies? Or prevent Greyghor Stohnar from adopting exactly the same ones? And if Stohnar did, would Clyntahn even care?

Probably not. He can’t conceive of the possibility of the “heretics” penetrating all the way to Zion, and since he’s here, safe behind the Temple’s walls, no one’s going to be hanging him anytime soon. So if he has to lose a few hundred—or a few thousand—fellow Schuelerites stamping out all resistance to his will, that doesn’t bother him at all.

“Well, Allayn,” Clyntahn said finally, his voice cold. “Suppose you explain how something you told us was going so well has now been so completely fucked up?”

Allayn Maigwair looked at the Grand Inquisitor, and there was something different about him, Duchairn thought. He met Clyntahn’s glare levelly, without the nervousness of days gone by, and the treasurer’s eyes narrowed. Had little Allayn—?

“I can explain exactly how it happened, Zhaspahr,” the captain general said coolly. “The heretics realized they couldn’t stand up to us in the field. They were being driven back at every point, suffering extremely heavy casualties. Oh, Wyrshym and Nybar have a point about what the Charisians did in the Sylmahn Gap, although Kaitswyrth hasn’t encountered the same sorts of weapons yet in Cliff Peak. That doesn’t mean they’re not there; it only means that until he pushes forward where the heretics have dug in on the Glacierheart border he won’t know whether or not Eastshare has them as well. My personal opinion is that Eastshare almost certainly does, and that Nybar and Wyrshym are perfectly correct that we have to figure out how they’re doing what they’re doing. For that matter, the rifles Kaitswyrth captured on the Daivyn are already on their way back here, and from his dispatches, it shouldn’t be difficult to duplicate them for our own men.

“But the plain truth is that even with every new weapon the Charisians brought to bear, we’d have driven all the way across Siddarmark in a single campaign—two thousand miles in one campaigning season, Zhaspahr!—if they hadn’t sent their damned ships up the rivers and blown the hell out of the canal system.”

Clyntahn sat back in his chair, eyes narrowing, face suddenly masklike, and Duchairn hid a smile as Maigwair’s assertive tone registered on the Grand Inquisitor. Little Allayn had grown up, the treasurer thought. The Army of God had been his brainchild, the product of his thought and his imagination, and while it hadn’t performed perfectly, he was right about how well it had performed. He’d been on the brink of the most crushing military triumph in the history of the world, and even now his forces controlled close to half of the Republic.

“And why weren’t the canals protected against them?” Clyntahn demanded, this time splitting his glower between Maigwair and Duchairn.

“Because no one knew anyone could attack them!” Maigwair snapped before Duchairn could reply. His eyes bored into the Grand Inquisitor. “Men can only respond to threats they know about, Zhaspahr, and not a single spy’s report—or a single inquisitor’s report—even hinted that something like these … armored ships existed! I passed along Earl Thirsk’s suggestion about armored ships, and if I remember correctly, you suggested no one would be able to produce enough iron plate to build a significant number of them. It may be you’re right about that … except that just four of them turned out to be a very significant number in this instance.”

The captain general opened the folder in front of him and pulled out a copy of the report Duchairn had prepared.

“Twenty-seven hundred miles of canal and river, Zhaspahr. Twenty-seven hundred, from the point where they entered the Guarnak–Ice Ash clear to Spinefish Bay. And fifty-one major locks, all destroyed. Not sabotaged, destroyed. Taken completely out of service for a minimum of six months—probably a lot longer!” He dropped the report on the table. “It’s all very well to say the canals should have been protected, Zhaspahr, but Wyrshym couldn’t stop one of them with thirty heavy field guns firing at less than a hundred yards range with double charges. Three of his guns burst trying! How in Langhorne’s name was anyone supposed to ‘protect’ the canals against an attack like that?!”

“By destroying the locks ourselves, in front of them and behind them!” Clyntahn shot back. “Much good their armor would’ve done them sitting in a dry canal bed!”

“I’m afraid there was never a real possibility of that, Zhaspahr,” Duchairn said in a carefully neutral voice. Clyntahn turned his glare upon him, and the treasurer shrugged. “First, someone—probably local heretics in New Northland—apparently attacked several semaphore stations before the Charisians headed inland. My administrators didn’t even know they were coming until they were three-quarters of the way to Guarnak, and they sent two more of their ships up the Hildermoss from Salyk to Cat Lizard Lake. Icewind’s got so few people it’s never been connected to the chain, so there wasn’t any semaphore to report them on the way, and they arrived in the middle of the night and took out the semaphore junction at Traymos, which cut off any warnings along the northern chain.

“Even after we finally began to learn what was happening, they moved too quickly for anyone to organize effective action against them. Our best estimate is that they were moving at an average speed of ten knots, even with the need to pass through all those locks, Zhaspahr. Ten miles an hour! They made the entire trip in barely thirteen days. Nobody ever dreamed of a ship that could move that fast, and they were destroying more semaphore stations as they advanced. By the time anyone in their path could have been thinking about trying to find anything to stop them with—and God knows every militia unit that ran into them got chewed to pieces—the heretics were already on top of them, with enough infantry to seize each lock as they came to it. And you may recall that the Book of Langhorne enjoins us to preserve canals, not blow them up! It would’ve taken direct orders from Mother Church—from your inquisitors, Zhaspahr!—to set that commandment aside, and there was no way to get those orders to them in time.”

He shrugged and sat back in his chair.

“You’re absolutely right that wrecking the canal locks would’ve stopped them,” he said. “And, to be honest, this looks to me like the sort of thing you can only get away with once. The next time it happens, we’ll know what they’re doing and how quickly they can move. If you’ll join me in issuing the necessary instructions ahead of time to permit Mother Church’s loyal sons to destroy locks, if that’s the only way to stop them, I think we can ensure this never happens again. But the first time? Coming at everyone involved with absolutely no warning?” He shook his head. “It just wasn’t going to happen, Zhaspahr. And it’s not anyone’s fault, either.”

Except, of course, he very carefully did not add aloud, the fault of your idiot agents inquisitor who never gave us a single breath of warning ahead of time. And just how did the heretics manage it, Zhaspahr? I don’t think they just set their own ships on fire, so how are they doing it? And how long will it take you to figure this one out so you can grant the proper dispensations and indulgences to bend the Proscriptions even further and do the same thing ourselves?

Clyntahn seemed to hunch down in his chair. Duchairn and Maigwair’s joint defiance appeared to have at least temporarily blunted his normal bellicosity, although the treasurer didn’t expect that to last. Soon enough, Clyntahn would be reminding himself of the brilliance of his own strategic concept … and blaming its failure on the poor execution of others.

“So how bad is it?” he demanded, looking back and forth between the treasurer and the captain general again. “How soon can we resume the offensive?”

“Zhaspahr, we can’t,” Duchairn said, almost gently. “Not until we get the canals repaired.” He tapped the report Maigwair had dropped on the table. “They destroyed every major lock, and most of the secondary ones, for the entire length of the Guarnak–Ice Ash Canal, the Guarnak-Sylmahn Canal, and the Hildermoss River between the Guarnak-Sylmahn Canal and Spinefish Bay. They made a side excursion far enough up the Sair to cripple the northern end of the Sair-Selkyr Canal, as well, and they destroyed every lock on the Tarikah River between East Wing Lake and the Hildermoss.” He shook his head. “The entire northern lobe of our logistic system’s been severed. Everything we were sending up the Holy Langhorne can’t go any farther than Lake City by water until we get the locks repaired, and that means we have two hundred thousand men we can no longer properly supply, most of them in territory where the crops either weren’t planted at all this year or went in late. And that’s not counting the loyal militia who’ve joined up with them, which adds about fifty percent to their own troop strength … and the mouths we have to feed. Without those supply lines, the best they’re going to be able to do is hold their positions. Even the Dohlarans will find themselves in the same situation, because we’re going to have to commandeer their supply route up the Fairmyn River and the Charayan Canal just to keep Kaitswyrth’s troops fed.”

“But we’ve got them on the run!” Clyntahn snarled. “If we let up now—!”

“I imagine that’s exactly what they had in mind,” Duchairn said in that same calm voice. “And it’s worked. We can probably get our waterborne communications at least as far as the Hildermoss restored by sometime late next spring or next summer. Until then, Allayn’s just going to have to hold what he’s already got.” The treasurer shrugged. “The only good news, if it can be called that, is that Siddarmark’s economy had already been so hammered that this isn’t going to cost us any revenue we would’ve had otherwise. Fixing it’s going to make Shan-wei’s own hole in the Treasury, though—don’t think it won’t! We haven’t had a chance to put the new revenue measures into place, and they’re going to help, so I can’t say for certain how bad the hole’s going to be, but I’m sure it’s going to be ugly. On the other hand, we don’t have any choice but to figure out how to plug it, so I imagine that’s what my clerks and I will be doing for the next few months while you and Allayn find out how the heretics did this to us.”

Clyntahn’s eyes smoldered dangerously, but he had his temper under control, for a change. There wasn’t much way he could have argued with Duchairn’s conclusions, after all.

“It’s no one’s fault, Zhaspahr,” Duchairn repeated. “And despite everything, we’re in a much better position than last winter. Allayn has far more depth between the Temple Lands and the heretics than we had before, and once we get the farms in western Siddarmark back into production—and repair enough of the canal system to transport their produce—the Army’s logistic problems will be enormously reduced. And for the immediate future, I don’t see any way the heretics can press the attack against us any more than we can press the attack against them. Our supplies are hamstrung; they’re still enormously outnumbered, and Stohnar is going to have to re-create his army from scratch.

“Neither side’s going to be able to mount a campaign before next summer. I think we need to spend the intervening time learning all we can about the heretics’ new weapons and these smoking iron ships of theirs. If our spies and the Inquisition can do that, I think Allayn and I can promise to have an army ready to use that information, next May or June.”