“So right now, Clyntahn’s control is stretched thin—maybe even thinner than he realizes—in Zion at the very moment when he’s about to commit the Church and every Temple Loyalist to an apocalypse that will kill millions of more people. If Duchairn’s ever going to act, it has to be now, and he doesn’t think he can succeed, even now, solely out of his own resources. So he sent the Major out to see if he could find the help he needs.”
“So Phandys was on a fishing expedition when he approached Master Mahkbyth,” Earl Coris murmured. “He didn’t know anything for certain, and all he had was what might or might not have been a code phrase Vicar Hauwerd overheard used in a conversation more than a decade ago. Is that about it?”
“Just about,” Nahrmahn agreed. “And that’s one reason my ‘professional pride’ is offended. This isn’t the sort of carefully calculated, exquisitely coordinated, brilliantly polished strategy upon which I pride myself, and it’s still about to do one hell of a lot of damage to Zhaspahr Clyntahn.”
“That remains to be seen,” Maikel Staynair said rather more somberly. “There are a million things that could go wrong. And even if there weren’t, we haven’t actually decided we’re going to give Duchairn the help he’s looking for.”
“What?” Irys twitched upright in her chair. “Of course we are!” She looked around the images projected onto her contact lenses, then turned to Coris … and saw the expression on his face. “Aren’t we?” she asked almost plaintively.
“Irys, if we help Duchairn—and, I’m pretty sure, Maigwair, even though Phandys refused to name anyone besides Duchairn—we may sabotage our own ultimate objective,” Sharleyan said quietly. “If Duchairn, with or without Maigwair, topples Clyntahn and manages to retain control afterwards—which is scarcely a given, I realize—he’ll offer us everything the Church of Charis has been demanding from the start. He’s already pledged to do that through Phandys, and while he may have lied to Phandys, Phandys definitely didn’t lie to Merlin or Nynian.”
Irys looked at Sharleyan’s image, her expression perplexed, and Coris sighed.
“Irys, we want to overthrow the Church of God Awaiting. Duchairn wants to reform it. He wants to stamp out its abuses, rein in the Inquisition, root out the corruption and the corrupters, and make as much honest, forthright restitution and recompense as he can for all the atrocities Clyntahn’s version of the Church has committed. If he offers to do those things, we can’t reject the offer. We can’t explain to our own people, much less to Greyghor Stohnar or all the other people trapped in this war, that we need to destroy the entire religion in which all of them believe. We just can’t do it, for the same reasons we haven’t been able to openly explain it to anyone already. So if we help Duchairn save the Church rather than continuing the war in hopes Clyntahn will ultimately destroy it, we may throw away our best chance to accomplish Nimue Alban’s true mission.”
“But all those people, Phylyp,” Irys half whispered. “All those people who might not have to die!”
“And that’s the heart of the problem, Irys,” Sharleyan said compassionately. “How far are we prepared to go to accomplish the objective we can’t tell anyone else about? And how many good and courageous people—like Major Phandys—are we willing to abandon to death while we do it? Because the one thing I can tell you for certain from having watched his conversation with Merlin and Nynian is that whether we support them or not, he and Duchairn are going to try.”
A long moment of silence hovered over the com link, and then Merlin smiled crookedly.
“You said this wasn’t one of your brilliant strategies, Nahrmahn,” he said, “and you’re right. What it is is more up Maikel’s alley than yours.”
“I beg your pardon?” The archbishop arched his eyebrows.
“It’s what you’ve talked about again and again, Maikel—the finger of God moving in the hearts of men. Think about how much how many people have sacrificed to bring us to this moment, to this decision point. Think about Samyl and Hauwerd, think about Zhorzhet and Marzho, about Duchairn and Phandys, and about the Sisters and Helm Cleaver. Think about all of that, and the chance Duchairn and Phandys took just contacting us in the first place. And then think about all the lives—our soldiers’ lives, not just those on the other side—we could save. That we might save. Do you really think we have a choice?”
He shook his head, and Nimue Chwaeriau’s holographic eyes met his across the link. Met his and agreed with them.
“God wouldn’t have given us this opportunity if He didn’t want us to take it,” Merlin said softly. “Maybe I’m wrong about that, but you know what? If I am, I don’t care. Not now. We’ve killed enough people. I’ve killed enough people. We’re not going to kill any more than we have to, whichever side they’re on, and we’ll just have to trust God to give us another opportunity somewhere down the road to accomplish Nimue’s mission. Because if He doesn’t want us to do this, then He’s been Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s God all along, and I know damned well He hasn’t.”
.VII.
Great Tarikah Forest,
and
Chyzwail,
West Wing Lake,
Tarikah Province,
Republic of Siddarmark.
Zhwozhyou Puyang, Earl Golden Tree, rubbed his eyes wearily. It didn’t help a lot. He was sixty-one years old, and those eyes no longer took candlelight in stride. Unfortunately, he was out of lamp oil, courtesy of the heavy heretic angle shell which had landed directly atop his headquarters bunker. He hadn’t been in it at the time, but most of his staff had, and all of his lamp oil—and the lamps to burn it and the fragments of all of his personal possessions—had been left strewn in the crater where the bunker once had been.
Along with the bloody bits and pieces of the staff who’d served him for over two years.
Golden Tree didn’t know what in Kau-yung’s name the heretics filled their goddamned shells with now, but some of them, at least, struck like Langhorne’s own Rakurai. The sheer size of the craters they left was enough to turn a man’s bowels to water. Actually seeing one of them explode—and surviving the experience—could destroy the resolve of even the most faith-filled.
He was proud of his men. It wouldn’t have done to admit that, of course, since most of them were the scum of the earth—peasants, at best, and conscripted serfs, the most of them. But they’d stood tall and fought hard for God even after the heretics managed to cut their only line of retreat behind them.
Golden Tree still didn’t know how the heretics had done that, either. In fact, there were Shan-wei’s own lot of things he didn’t know … including how God expected him to get his command out of this trap. All he knew for certain was that eight days ago the heretic Stohnar had somehow gotten one—at least one—of his outsized infantry brigades deep enough into the Great Tarikah Forest to overwhelm his pickets on the South Tairyn River. Now the heretics controlled his only avenue of supply … or escape. And even if they hadn’t held the river, only God and the Archangels knew if the Mighty Host still held the other end of the high road, where it exited the forest. Earl Rainbow Waters’ last dispatch had indicated that Gleesyn was still holding and that the line he’d stitched together to cover the high road beyond the forest remained intact. But that dispatch was eight days old.