“May I ask just how we ‘know’ that?” Walkyr’s tone was skeptical.
“We think we know that because one of our spies in Siddar City got his hands on a copy of the actual movement orders and sent it off to us by messenger wyvern,” Maigwair replied. “That’s the strongest bit of evidence yet, but there are others. I wouldn’t be inclined to put a huge amount of faith in any of them, given how effectively the other side’s shut down our spy networks so often, but all of them together paint a convincing picture. And Zhaspahr swears the agent who sent us the copy of those movement orders has never yet sent us false information. In fact, according to Zhaspahr, this is the spy who got us the plans for the new steelmaking methods.”
Walkyr looked suddenly thoughtful at that, and Maigwair shrugged.
“Like I say. I wouldn’t be in any hurry to jump at this sort of information in most cases. Chihiro, I’m not in a hurry to jump at it now! But nothing we’ve seen yet contradicts it, and at least some of the information we have comes from what certainly seems to be a reliable source. And if it’s accurate, there has to be a reason they’re reinforcing High Mount even at the expense of diverting additional Siddarmarkian troops to him rather than further strengthening Stohnar or standing up an entirely new, purely Siddarmarkian army to throw at us. Siddarmark’s army was the best in the world for at least a century. It’s got to be galling to take second place behind the Charisians at this point, however grateful the Republic may be to Cayleb and Sharleyan for saving its arse. I’m sure the Lord Protector’s feeling a lot of pressure to establish major field armies under Siddarmarkian commanders, so the orders sending so many of his new divisions to High Mount probably don’t represent some casual whim on his part. And the fact that High Mount’s shifted his headquarters to Halfmyn doesn’t make us any happier.”
Walkyr frowned, contemplating the map from where he sat.
Halfmyn was over three hundred miles south of Aivahnstyn on the Daivyn River, where Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s Army of Glacierheart had met its doom, and High Mount’s Army of Cliff Peak had been the primary pursuit force which had completed the Army of Glacierheart’s destruction. At that point, he’d been well north of Aivahnstyn, so he’d actually moved something more like four hundred miles to his current position.
“What about Symkyn?” he asked, waving at the map which showed Ahlyn Symkyn’s Army of the Daivyn headquartered at Aivahnstyn.
“Indications are that he’s being strengthened, as well. Not as much as High Mount, but more than Eastshare on his northern flank,” Maigwair replied, and Walkyr frowned some more.
“You think they’re shifting the main weight of their attack south?” The archbishop militant’s tone was slightly—very slightly—less incredulous.
“It seems possible, at any rate.” Maigwair sighed and toyed with his pectoral scepter. “It’s not what I expected out of them, and it would certainly represent a shift from their last year’s strategy.” He shrugged. “Last year—and the year before that, for that matter—they concentrated on destroying field armies. Did a damned good job of it, too, and it’s a strategy that’s been working well for them so far. Now they have to realize Rainbow Waters and the Host are both our strongest remaining field force and the most exposed, in a lot of ways. If they can push around behind him, the way they did to Wyrshym—I know that’d be a lot harder to pull off, especially in a summer campaign, but I’m not about to say it wouldn’t be possible for those bastards—they could cut the Holy Langhorne. And if they managed that, the better part of two-thirds of the Mighty Host would lose its primary logistic link to the Temple Lands. Even if they can’t get around behind him, they’ve got enough of a mobility advantage that I’ve been anticipating their trying to break his front at selected points, then exploiting to flank out his positions on either side of the breakthroughs.”
Walkyr nodded. He’d shared Maigwair’s analysis of the heretics’ probable strategy. In fact, he’d helped formulate it.
Mother Church’s enemies, and especially the Imperial Charisian Army, had given her defenders a pointed and extremely painful lesson in the virtues of mobility, starting with the destruction of the Army of Shiloh and culminating in the previous summer’s crushing defeats on the Daivyn and in the Sylmahn Gap. The Army of God was attempting to offset at least some of that advantage in its newly raised divisions, a quarter of which were dragoons—mounted infantry, not lancers—although no one expected those new divisions to be as proficient, initially at least, as the far more experienced Charisians. The Mighty Host was more poorly placed than the AOG when it came to mounting its infantry for a lot of reasons, including the fact that serfs had always been … strongly discouraged from becoming proficient equestrians. Because of that, Rainbow Waters had been forced to convert existing cavalry units into dragoons if he wanted to increase his mounted infantry strength, and Walkyr was far from convinced the “conversion” was more than skin-deep for the majority of Harchongese cavalry officers.
Despite all efforts, however, Mother Church’s armies were going to remain far less mobile than their opponents. That being the case, the logical thing for Cayleb and his generals to do was to continue to exploit that strength—and their successful strategy—and concentrate on destroying or at least crippling Rainbow Waters’ Harchongians in the coming campaign. Piercing the Mighty Host’s front at some carefully chosen point or points might well permit them to break loose mounted columns in Rainbow Waters’ rear. If they managed that and were able to get in behind his fortified strong points before he could fall back, they might be able to cut his force up into disjointed detachments and crush them in detail.
That was the primary reason close to a quarter of the entire Mighty Host was earmarked as a strategic reserve, held well behind the Harchongians’ “frontier positions” in order—hopefully—to counter any Charisian or Siddarmarkian breakthroughs.
“After Rayno brought the Inquisition’s new reports about High Mount’s reinforcements to my attention, I had Tobys and his analysts go over them,” Maigwair continued, “and I asked him to look at anything we’d turned up, as well. It’s all damnably ‘hypothetical,’ of course. Chihiro! I’d give one of my balls—maybe both of them—for spies as capable as Cayleb seems to have!” He glared at the wall map, then shrugged and looked back at Walkyr. “Hypothetical or not, though, there are definite signs they’re weighting their left flank a lot more heavily than they ought to be if they plan on doing what we’ve all convinced ourselves is the smart thing for them to do. And much as I hate to say it, we don’t exactly have the best possible record for outguessing the bastards.”
He did not, Walkyr noticed, point out that he and the Army of God in general had a rather better record than Zhaspahr Clyntahn did. If Maigwair had been free to make his own deployments and decisions without the Inquisitor General’s interference, Cahnyr Kaitswyrth would have been replaced months before the Army of Glacierheart’s destruction and Bahrnabai Wyrshym would have been allowed to retreat long before he was cut off and crushed. Whether even a replacement would have been able to prevent what the heretics had done to the Army of Glacierheart last summer was an unanswerable question, but no conceivable replacement could have done a worse job than Kaitswyrth had.
“At any rate,” Maigwair continued, oblivious to the archbishop militant’s thoughts, “it’s certainly possible—conceivable, at least—that they’ve decided to capitalize on Hanth’s successes against Rychtyr. In fact, according to Zhaspahr,” he rolled his eyes, “that’s obviously the reason they haven’t reinforced Hanth more strongly.”