That meant Maigwair would deploy very close to three million men this year, exclusive of anything Dohlar and the Border States might be able to sustain. That would be a far greater troop strength—far better equipped and with far more artillery support—than Mother Church had ever had before, although as Maigwair had just pointed out, the new AOG divisions wouldn’t be available before June or July. They would, however, be coming up behind the Mighty Host rapidly, which would provide a cushion against Harchongese losses in the earlier part of the campaign season. In fact, the combined strength of the Host and the new AOG formations would be at least four times as great as the Inquisition’s worst-case estimate of the numbers of men Cayleb and Stohnar could throw against them. The sheer firepower that represented was awesome to contemplate, and it seemed incredible—impossible—that it could be shattered the same way the Armies of the Sylmahn and of Glacierheart had been shattered the year before, especially with Rainbow Waters’ cool, practical brain in command.
Yet it could happen. Charisians were as mortal and as fallible as anyone, whatever Clyntahn might say about demonic intervention. What had happened to them in the Kaudzhu Narrows demonstrated that clearly enough! And if anyone could hand them another defeat, this time on land, that anyone had to be Rainbow Waters. Yet in Rhobair Duchairn’s estimation, even he had only an even chance—at the very best—of pulling it off. And if he failed, if the Charisians destroyed the Mighty Host the way they had every other army they’d faced—or even if they only drove it back with heavy casualties and the loss of much of its equipment—the Jihad was over.
They might find millions more men prepared to die in Mother Church’s defense, men willing to charge into the enemy’s guns with no more than raw courage, sheer faith, and their bare hands. But bare hands would be all they’d have, because Mother Church simply couldn’t replace the weapons of the armies she had in the field now. Not again. Win or lose, live or die, her purse was effectively empty. They were at the last stretch of her resources, and if those resources weren’t enough, her defeat was certain.
“Well,” he sighed, draining off the last of his own beer and setting the stein back on his desk, “I suppose we’ll find out whether or not the Earl can pull it off soon enough. In the meantime, I wonder what the Desnairians are up to?”
“Nothing good,” Maigwair growled.
“Well, they did get badly burned in Shiloh,” Duchairn pointed out more judiciously. “What happened to them at Geyra Bay didn’t make it any better, either. I’m sure—” the irony in his tone glittered like a bared razor “—they’re doing their very best to get back into the field against Mother Church’s enemies.”
“And if you really believe that, I’ve got some bottomland to sell you,” Maigwair said dryly. “Just don’t ask me what it’s on the bottom of.”
“Oh, I agree they’re planning on keeping their heads as far down as they can—up their own arses, actually, as far as I can tell,” Duchairn replied. “They are still getting at least some of their tithes through, though. In fact, they’ve even turned up the wick. I’m not sure exactly how they’re managing it, but they’re actually eleven percent ahead of their tithe obligations, even on the new, steeper schedule. Not only that, the Desnairian crown’s bought something like twenty million marks of the new bond issue, too.” The treasurer shook his head. “Must be even more gold in those mines than I thought there was.”
“Trying to buy off Zhaspahr’s inquisitors, are they?”
“Pretty much.” Duchairn nodded. “On the other hand, you know, it’s remotely possible you and I are a little too cynical where they’re concerned. Zahmsyn keeps telling me that, anyway.”
“Zahmsyn’s telling you anything he thinks will keep Zhaspahr from deciding he’s expendable,” Maigwair said cynically. “Especially because, frankly, he is. Expendable, I mean.”
And that, Duchairn reflected, was brutally true. Vicar Zahmsyn Trynair, who’d once been the mastermind of the Group of Four that truly plotted Mother Church’s course—whatever canon law might say—had become little more than a cipher. Of course, looking back, Duchairn had his doubts about the degree to which Trynair (and everyone else) had always thought he was the Group of Four’s mastermind in the first place.
Over the last year or so, especially, the treasurer had come to realize Clyntahn had been heading towards the destruction of Charis long before Erayk Dynnys’ supposed failures gave him the excuse he needed. The only question in Duchairn’s mind was his motive for deciding Charis must die. It was always possible, given the Grand Inquisitor’s blend of gluttonous hedonism and fanaticism, that he truly had distrusted Charisian orthodoxy. Yet it was equally possible—and, frankly, more likely—that he’d seen the Jihad—or at least a jihad—as the strategy which would finally give the Inquisition total and unquestioned control of Mother Church and the entire world from the very start.
He doubted Clyntahn had ever imagined Mother Church’s inevitable victory would be as costly as the Jihad had already proven, far less that it might not be quite as inevitable as he’d thought, but the cost in blood and agony—in other people’s blood and agony—wouldn’t have fazed him for a moment. If a few million innocent people had to die in order for the Inquisition—and Zhaspahr Clyntahn—to secure absolute power, that would have struck him as a completely acceptable price.
If Duchairn was right, Clyntahn had been pulling the rest of the Group of Four’s puppet strings all along. And whatever the Grand Inquisitor’s secret agenda might have been, Trynair had depended upon the twin strengths of his control of Grand Vicar Erek XVII and his ability to orchestrate smooth, skillful diplomatic strategies and policies, both within and without the ranks of the vicarate. To the secular rulers of Safehold, he’d been the face of Mother Church’s will in the world; to the rest of the vicarate, he’d been the suave diplomat who adroitly balanced one faction of prelates against another. Yet now even the Grand Vicar was too terrified of Clyntahn’s Inquisition to defy him, and all those other machinations, all that diplomatic footwork, meant absolutely nothing. At bottom, diplomats operated on credit, and if there was anyone in the world who understood the limitations of credit, Rhobair Duchairn was that man. When diplomacy failed, when your bets and your hedges and bluffs were called, only raw power truly counted, and Trynair was no longer a power broker.
I guess the Group of Four really has become the Group of Three, because there are only three poles of power left: the Army that has to fight the Jihad; the Treasury that has to somehow pay for the Jihad; and the Inquisition that has to keep people willing to support the Jihad. So it comes down to Allayn, Zhaspahr … and me. But at least Allayn and I recognize—or are willing to admit we recognize, anyway—that there are limits to the power we control. I truly think Zhaspahr isn’t … and what’s going to happen when he finally comes face-to-face with the truth?
Rhobair Duchairn had asked himself many questions over the past five years.
Very few of them had filled his blood with as much ice as that one did.
.VI.
HMS Eraystor, 22,
Wind Gulf Sea.
There was no dawn.
Somewhere above the solid cliffs of lightning-shot cloud the sun had no doubt heaved itself back into the heavens. Below those cliffs, the midnight gloom simply grew marginally less dark and visibility increased to a slightly greater circle of wind-driven, tortured white. It was possible to see the oncoming wave crests loom up above the solid, seething surface of blown spray at least a little sooner, even without the stuttering flash of Langhorne’s rakurai, but the jarring, bone-shaking impact as each furious mountain of water slammed home was no less vicious. Belowdecks, the stench from backed up heads and the vomit of desperately seasick men was enough to turn a statue’s stomach, and green-gray water roared along the decks, seeking voraciously for any loose gear, clawing at the heavy gaskets of Corisandian rubber that sealed the casemates’ gun shields. Some of that water spurted past the gaskets, spraying inboard in fans of icy brine and then sluicing along the decks until it found its way into the bilges where the humming pumps could send it back overside.