“Yes, My Lord!” the lord of foot at his shoulder bowed and touched his chest in salute, then snapped his fingers sharply. An aide bowed in turn and lifted the signal flag which had lain ready at his feet. He raised it and swept it in a vigorous circle high overhead, sharply enough that the swallow-tailed banner popped loudly in the wind of its passage.
For a few moments, nothing happened. And then, from well behind Wind Song’s vantage point, thunder rumbled like Chihiro’s kettle drums. Forty heavy angle-guns, the product of the Church of God Awaiting’s steadily growing steel foundries, hurled their shells overhead. They came wailing down the heavens, shrieking their anger, and impacted on the fortifications in a hurricane eruption of fire, smoke, flying snow, and pulverized dirt. For five minutes that torrent of devastation crashed down, stunning the ear. Then ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
The awesome, terrifying display of sheer destruction lasted for a full thirty minutes. Then it ended, if not with quite knife-like sharpness, sharply enough, and Wind Song reached up and plucked the cotton-silk earplugs out of his ears.
“Impressive, Shygau,” he said to the lord of foot, and Shygau Zhyngbau permitted himself a somewhat broader smile, bordering perilously closely upon a grin, than Harchongese etiquette would have approved in a properly behaved noble.
Of course, Zhyngbau’s connection to the aristocracy was … tenuous, at best. Technically, he was some sort of distant relation of Lord Admiral of Navies Mountain Shadow, although he and the duke had never met. The relationship was sufficient, barely, to make him at least marginally tolerable as the senior artillerist of the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels. Personally, Wind Song wouldn’t have cared if the man had been a serf, given his sheer capability. Then again, Wind Song’s own horizons had been somewhat … broadened since his uncle had assumed command of the Mighty Host and he’d come face-to-face with the realities of the Jihad.
“From here, it looks pretty bad,” Wind Song continued, turning to the considerably shorter officer standing to his left.
Unlike Shygau, Captain of Horse Syang Rungwyn had no aristocratic connection whatsoever, and he was—sad to say—totally deficient in the graces, deportment, and exquisite rhetoric of the Harchong Empire’s great houses. He wasn’t even connected to the bureaucrats who ran that empire. In fact, his sole qualification for his position as the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels’ senior engineer was that he was even better at his job than Zhyngbau was at his.
“It does,” Rungwyn acknowledged. “May I, My Lord?”
He indicated the spyglass, and Wind Song moved aside to allow him to peer through it. There was still enough drifting smoke—and flailed snow—to make detailed observation difficult, but it was beginning to settle. Rungwyn’s gloved fingers adjusted the glass carefully, then swung it in minute increments as he studied the churned, cratered wilderness the artillery storm had created. His expression was impassive, and when he straightened, his eyes were merely thoughtful.
“Actually, My Lord, I believe first impressions may have been misleading.” He twitched his right hand in a brushing-away gesture. “The trenches have caved in in many instances, and the obstacle belt’s been severely damaged, but I think we’ll find the majority of the deep bunkers fared much better than that.”
“Truly?” Wind Song arched one eyebrow, then bent over the spyglass to examine the battered fortifications. It was possible, he conceded, that Rungwyn had a point.
And perhaps you should have looked first yourself before you began spouting opinions, Medyng. How often has Uncle Taychau suggested that to you? It doesn’t always follow that something which looks irresistible truly is.
“I believe you may have a point, Captain of Horse,” he said as he straightened his back. “I propose we go and take a closer look.”
“But not too precipitously, My Lord,” Zhyngbau put in. Wind Song looked at him, and the lord of foot shrugged. “I regret to point out that our fuses are still less reliable than the heretics’, and I would truly prefer not to be blown up by—or, even more, not to blow you up with—an unexploded shell’s delayed detonation. I suspect Earl Rainbow Waters would be mildly perturbed with me for allowing anything like that. May I suggest you wait another twenty minutes, perhaps … and that my gunners and I precede you?”
“Since I have no greater desire to be blown up than you have to see that sad fate overtake me, suppose we make it a full hour, instead? Or, for that matter, two. I see it’s almost time for luncheon, anyway. I invite both of you to share the meal with me.” The baron smiled with an edge of genuine warmth. “It will give your gunners an opportunity to check for those unexploded shells … without you, since I fear my uncle would be only marginally less delighted to lose you than to lose me. It will also give us an opportunity to share our pre-inspection impressions and perhaps hit upon some additional thoughts for the test of the new bombardment rockets when they arrive.”
* * *
Well, that’s … irritating, Kynt Clareyk, Baron Green Valley and the commanding officer of the Army of Midhold, thought as he crossed to his office stove. In fact, that’s intensely irritating.
At the moment, his army—which was due to be rechristened the Army of Tarikah next month—lay encamped along the Lakeside-Gray Hill High Road. “Encamped” was probably the wrong word, given its implication of impermanence, when applied to the solidly built barracks the always-efficient Imperial Charisian Army Corps of Engineers, was busily constructing. Those engineers had been encouraged to even greater efficiency in this case by the current weather, and by the time they were done, Camp Mahrtyn Taisyn would sprawl over several square miles of New Northland Province and provide snug, weather-tight housing for upwards of eighty thousand men. That was still very much a work in progress at the moment, but some buildings—like the one housing the commanding general—had been assigned a greater priority than others, and Green Valley listened to the icy midnight wind whining around the eaves as he used a pair of tongs to settle two new lumps of Glacierheart coal into the stove. He pushed the door shut with the tongs, then returned to his desk and tipped back in his chair to consider the implications of the latest SNARC report.
It shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise, he told himself. You already knew Rainbow Waters had a brain he wasn’t afraid to use, and then you went and gave him plenty of time to do the using. What did you think would happen?
That wasn’t entirely fair, and he knew it, but he wasn’t in the mood for “fair.”
There was no doubt in his mind that the delay imposed by liberation of the Inquisition’s concentration camps had been both a moral and a strategic imperative. Charis and her allies had to save as many of the Inquisition’s victims as possible. Their own souls, their own ability to look into the mirror, demanded it. And even if that hadn’t been the case, they had to demonstrate to friend and foe alike that they cared what happened to Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s victims. So, yes, the Army of Midhold had had no alternative but to stop short of the Hildermoss River while its logistic capability was diverted to rescuing and then caring for, feeding, and transporting thousands upon thousands of sick, half-starved, brutalized prisoners to safety. In the end, they’d rescued considerably more than the three hundred thousand he’d estimated they might get out … despite losing every single inmate from three of those camps.