Midst Toil and Tribulation by David Weber
And Zhasyn Cahnyr’s heart seemed to stop as he heard a sound like a line drive in a shortstop’s glove and saw Sahmantha Gorjah go down.
* * *
Fyrmahn cursed aloud as the man who had to be the heretical archbishop Cahnyr went down. The range had been less than a hundred and fifty yards, and the quarrel should have gone straight into Cahnyr’s belly. But however fiery the spirit might be, it couldn’t simply ignore hunger and cold, and his convulsive shivering had thrown the shot off. Almost worse, there’d been only three other quarrels to accompany his own, which meant the cold had claimed at least one of the others while they waited. He wondered who they’d lost, but the question was distant, unimportant under the lava of his rage and the frustration of having missed his mark at such short range.
It might still do the job. If he’d managed to sever the artery the apostate bastard would bleed out in minutes. Even if he hadn’t, out here in the middle of ice and snow on a narrow, slippery trail, Langhorne knew they were likely to kill him simply trying to get him back down … especially with the Shan-wei-damned healer already down. But if that truly was Cahnyr, this was no time to settle for “might.” If there was one man in all Glacierheart who needed killing even worse than Wahlys Mahkhom, it had to be Zhasyn Cahnyr, the heart and soul of the heresy.
He unfolded the crank from the side of his arbalest and began respanning the steel bow. It wasn’t easy in a prone position, even with the built-in crank’s mechanical advantage, and he swore again, quietly, as the clicking sound of the cocking pawl taunted him. He was well hidden, but the heretics on the trail were survivors, graduates of a hard school. They’d dropped prone themselves, and their heads were up, the rifles ready, as their eyes searched the slope above them. If one of them—
A rifle cracked viciously, and Fyrmahn heard a shrill, ululating scream from his left. He didn’t know how Dahrand had drawn the heretic’s attention, and he clenched his teeth, trying to ignore his cousin’s agonized sounds as they slowly, slowly faded. He turned the crank harder, faster, keeping his own head down under his sheet, and cursed savagely as another rifle cracked.
There was no answering scream, but the rifleman wouldn’t have fired if he hadn’t thought he had a target. He might have been wrong, but the heretics weren’t in the habit of wasting powder and shot on targets they weren’t certain of. And—
A third shot cracked and echoed, and this time there was a scream—a choked off, chopped short scream that told him he’d just lost a second kinsman.
* * *
Cahnyr rolled over onto his belly, teeth clenched in anguish, dragging himself through the snow towards Sahmantha. There was blood on the hood of her parka, and his soul froze within him at the thought of facing Gharth. Then he shook his head, fiercely, banishing the thought and forced himself to crawl faster.
“Lie still, Your Eminence!” Sailys Trahskhat shouted. “Mahrtyn, get a tourniquet on the Archbishop’s thigh and then get him the hell out of here!”
“Aye, Sailys!” another voice responded, and the corner of Cahnyr’s eye saw one of Trahskhat’s men crawling towards him.
The archbishop ignored him, just as he ignored Trahskhat’s repeated order to lie still. He had other things on his mind, and he struggled towards Sahmantha, lips moving in prayer.
* * *
Fyrmahn’s arbalest string clicked over the roller nut, and he yanked the crank out of the spanning gear and shoved it flat once more. He groped in his quiver for another quarrel, fitting it to the string, and even as he did, he heard two more rifle shots. He didn’t know if they’d hit anything, but if they’d actually seen a target before they fired, his last companion was undoubtedly pinned down, if not worse.
It was up to him, and he set his jaw, glaring down the steep, white slope. His target was dragging himself grimly towards the fallen healer, leaving a trail of red in the snow as proof of his own wound. Fyrmahn could almost taste the traitor archbishop’s anguish, but the man wasn’t slowing down, and his progress had carried him out of Fyrmahn’s line of fire. The arbalest was a long, heavy weapon, with a two-hundred-pound pull and a twelve-inch draw; under the right conditions, he could make a killing shot at six hundred yards. But along with that length and power came clumsiness, and he couldn’t lower his point of aim enough to hit the crawling archbishop.
Or not from a prone position, at any rate.
His nostrils flared, but the decision was remarkably easy to make. After all, his family was already dead; he might as well join them, especially if he could send that bastard Cahnyr to hell along the way.
He drew a deep breath, settled himself for just a moment, then pushed up onto one knee in a single, flowing motion, and the arbalest’s butt pressed his shoulder.
* * *
Sailys Trahskhat saw the sudden motion, saw the red-haired, red-bearded figure throw aside the white fabric under which it had lain hidden. He saw the arbalest coming up, and he knew—knew—who that hard, hating man was.
He twisted around, bringing his rifle sights to bear, but not quickly enough. The arbalest rose to Fyrmahn’s shoulder even as his own finger tightened on the trigger, and the roar of his rifle and the snap of the arbalest string were a single sound.
* * *
A hammer pounded a fiery spike into Zhan Fyrmahn’s chest. The rifle bullet shredded its way through his right lung, missing his heart by less than an inch, mushrooming and ripping and tearing as it went. The impact drove him back, slammed him into the snow, and he felt his life soaking into his parka on the scalding tide of his own blood.
His left hand groped towards the anguish, already feeble, his strength already failing. He didn’t know what he hoped to do. It was simply instinct, the body’s futile effort to somehow stanch the blood. If his brain had still been functioning, he would have known it was useless, but it wasn’t working—not well, not clearly enough to understand.
Yet there was room in his fading mind for one last, clear thought.
I got the bastard. I got him.
It wasn’t much, there at the end of all things, but for Zhan Fyrmahn, it was enough.
* * *
“Shan-wei damn it, Your Eminence! If you don’t lie still, I swear I’m going to—!”
Sailys Trahskhat made himself close his mouth, clenching his teeth against quite a few rather disrespectful and irreligious but undeniably pithy comments.
Archbishop Zhasyn ignored him, continuing to struggle towards Sahmantha.
“Damn it, Your Eminence! Let me at least get a dressing on your thigh before you bleed to death!”
“Don’t worry about me,” Cahnyr panted. “Sahmantha! Take care of Sahmantha!”
“I’ll do that if you just settle down and let me bandage that thigh first,” Trahskhat grated. Cahnyr turned his head, glaring at him, and the Charisian glared right back. “Your Eminence, it glanced off her skull!” He shook his head as Cahnyr’s eyes widened. “You think I haven’t seen enough head wounds by now to know when someone’s just been grazed?! I’m not saying she couldn’t have a concussion, even a serious one, and arbalest bolts are nasty, so she could have a skull fracture as well. But it’s still only a grazing hit, and we can’t do anything about it except put a dressing on it out here on this damned trail. And I can’t put a dressing on her until you let me put one on the wound that’s bleeding like a stuck pig in your thigh. Or are you somehow of the opinion that she wouldn’t skin me alive and salt me down if I were to let you bleed to death while I was tying a bandage around her head?”
Cahnyr looked back up at him for a moment, then slumped back.
“All right,” he managed. “I see you aren’t going to give me a moment’s peace if I don’t let you do what you want. So go ahead.”
“Are all archbishops as stubborn as you are?” Trahskhat demanded, stooping over the older man.
He reached down and gripped the arbalest bolt standing out of the archbishop’s parka and yanked. It came free with a tearing sound, and he checked the knife-sharp
The thigh wound was another matter, although for all the archbishop’s bleeding, there was no arterial spurt. That was a good sign, as long as they could keep him from going into shock out here on the mountainside, at any rate.
He drew his belt knife, cutting open Cahnyr’s quilted breeches to get at the wound, and pursed his lips as he saw the ugly entry point and even uglier exit wound. Assuming they didn’t lose the archbishop after all, the old man was going to have one hell of a scar, he thought.
He reached for Sahmantha Gorjah’s shoulder bag. He was no trained healer, but after this brutal winter, he’d learned more about dressing wounds than he’d ever wanted to know. He knew how to apply Fleming moss, at any rate, although he wasn’t about to fool around with any of the healer’s painkillers. Still—
Sahmantha stirred. Her eyelids fluttered, and she moaned softly, raising one hand to the blood-oozing furrow the arbalest bolt had gouged across the right side of her head. Her eyes blinked open. For a moment, they were vague, unfocused. Then they narrowed abruptly.
“His Eminence!” She braced herself on her hands, ready to shove herself upright, and Trahskhat put a heavy hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down.
“Langhorne, not you, too!”
“His Eminence,” she repeated hoarsely. “I saw—”
“You saw him go down, lassie,” Trahskhat said more gently, “but it’s no more than a leg wound. Now, if you’ll just bide for a moment, long enough for me to get his bleeding stopped, then I’ll see to you. And if you can keep your eyes uncrossed long enough to play seamstress and stitch him up, and maybe see to Vyktyr’s shoulder,” he twitched his head to where another of his men was applying a compress to the shoulder of his wounded rifleman, “then maybe—just maybe—I’ll be managing to get all three of you off this damned mountain and back to Captain Raimahn still breathing. And as for you, Your Eminence,” he glowered down at the archbishop even as he began tightening a dressing over the ugly wounds, “the next time the Captain tells you you’ve no business doing something, you’d best listen! Damn it, what d’you think I’m going to tell him if I have to come back and admit I lost you! He’d never forgive me—never! Of all the stubborn, stiff-necked, obstinate, pigheaded old—!”
He broke off, blinking on tears, and Cahnyr reached up to pat his forearm.
“Oh, hush, Sailys!” he said gently. “You haven’t lost me yet, and if Sahmantha’s still her usual efficient self, you aren’t going to. In fact, she needs to see to Vyktyr first—his wound’s obviously far worse than mine.”
“But—” Trahskhat looked down at him, and the archbishop shook his head.
“I’ll be fine, my son. And if I’m not, I’ve no one but myself to blame for not having listened to you—and, yes, Captain Raimahn. So let’s see to Vyktyr and to Sahmantha, and then let’s drag my preeminent, ordained, stubborn episcopal arse back down this mountain so all three of you can abuse me properly.”
.XVI.
HMS Destiny, 56, Howell Bay, Kingdom of Old Charis, Charisian Empire
“I imagine you wish you’d been home longer.”
Irys Daykyn stood at the after rail of HMS Destiny, watching as the steeples and rooftops of the city of Tellesberg disappear into the distance. She wasn’t quite certain how she’d found herself standing there. It wasn’t as if Tellesberg was her home town, after all! Yet somehow it had … just happened, and she was a little surprised by how comfortable it felt.
“Seamen get used to it, Your Highness,” Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk replied, his own eyes on the brilliantly gilded scepter flashing back the sun in golden glory from atop Tellesberg Cathedral’s highest steeple. He shrugged. “Merchant sailors only get short visits between voyages, and those of us in the Crown’s service spend a lot longer at sea between them than most.” He turned his head to look at her and smiled slightly. “I think that makes us appreciate it more when we do get home, but at the same time, we don’t quite … fit ashore anymore. This”—the wave of the hand took in the masts, sails, rush of water, and croon of wind—“is where we fit. To be completely honest, this has been my ‘home’ since before I was Daivyn’s age. When I visit my parents, my brothers and sisters, I’m visiting in their home now, not mine.”
“Really?” A shadow touched her eyes. “That’s sad.”
“Oh, no, Your Highness!” He shook his head quickly. “Or not any sadder than for anyone when they grow up. Mother and Father will always be what I think of when I … reach back for where I came from, but every child has to become an adult someday, doesn’t he? Or she? And when that happens, they have to find their own places in the world. That’s something a life at sea teaches early, too.”
She studied his face and expression, and then, slowly, she nodded.
“I suppose that’s true. But at the same time, isn’t home what makes us who we are? The place we’re constantly comparing other places and other times to?”
“Maybe.” He cocked his head, considering. “Maybe,” he repeated, “but we outgrow it, too. We have to learn and change.”
He snorted suddenly and grinned. There was at least a hint of remembered pain in that grin, she thought, yet that only seemed to make him appreciate whatever had prompted it even more strongly.
“What?” she asked.
“Oh, I was just thinking how much my life’s changed, Your Highness!” He twitched his head in Countess Hanth’s direction. “I remember the day Earl Hanth returned to his earldom. We delivered him to Hanth Town on this very ship, you know.”
“No.” She shook her head, turning to look in the countess’ direction herself, and her own lips quirked. “No, I hadn’t realized Sir Dunkyn’s made such a habit of delivering people places.”
“He’s an interesting man, Sir Dunkyn,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk said. “And so is Earl Hanth. I was only a midshipman then, of course, and His Majesty had only just hung this ridiculous title on me. I was feeling … overwhelmed’s probably a pretty good word, I guess. And Earl Hanth felt the same, given what an incredible mess that bastard—” He grimaced. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t use that kind of language speaking to you, Your Highness. But I can’t think of a better word for Tahdayo Mahntayl, and he left Shan-wei’s own mess for the Earl to clean up. I think he would’ve given just about anything to stay plain old Colonel Breygart, but he couldn’t run away any more than I could, so he gave me some good advice, instead. None of which makes it seem any less crazy sometimes, when I think about it.”
“Would you like to go back to being someone else?” She wondered why she’d asked the question almost before it was out of her mouth, yet she watched his face intently.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Or maybe I just think I’d like to. As Archbishop Maikel says, we are who we are, and all anyone can ask of anyone else is that we be who we are to the very best of our ability. And who I am now, ridiculous as it may seem, is His Grace the Duke of Darcos, so that’s who I have to be. I can’t go back to being plain old Hektor Aplyn any more than a chicken or wyvern can crawl back into the egg. And it’d be pretty stupid to pretend there aren’t some nice advantages to the change.” He gave her another quick grin. “Mother and Father tried to tell me not to waste money on them when I first suggested it, but I don’t think they really mind living in Darcos Manor, now that they’ve gotten used to it. I did have to point out to them that it came with the title and it would just stand empty the entire time I was at sea if they didn’t, so they’d actually be doing me a favor by living there. I’m not sure Father bought my argument, of course, but Cayleb—I mean, His Majesty—was pretty insistent when he tried to talk his way out of it.” His grin turned into a smile. “And having the money to get the younger ones proper educations … that was a wonderful change, Your Highness. Did I tell you my bro
“No, you didn’t. Let’s see … Chestyr is the left-handed twin, is that right?”
“I see I’ve bored you with too many details about my family, Your Highness,” he acknowledged. “But, yes. Father’s proud enough of him to burst his buttons, although I think Mother’s a little more concerned about where exposure to all that ‘dangerous knowledge’ is likely to lead.”
Irys smiled and nodded, yet a part of her couldn’t help agreeing with Sailmah Aplyn. She was still very much in two minds about exactly what the Royal College represented, and her own temptation to embrace its knowledge only made that mental ambiguity murkier. And she knew not even Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s title would have won his brother admission if he hadn’t earned it. From its inception, the Royal College had admitted students solely on the basis of competitive examination, without favor or exception.
Still, from a practical, secular viewpoint, it didn’t matter one bit whether or not Chestyr Aplyn became a student there. If Charis lost its war, Zhaspahr Clyntahn would never allow a single member of the House of Ahrmahk—however remote, or however indirect the connection—to survive. He wouldn’t need Chestyr’s exposure to heretical or tainted knowledge for that, although the butcher would probably cloak his pogrom in the Inquisition’s responsibility to stamp out such blasphemous teachings.
Her smile faded at the thought, and she wondered why it disturbed her so, why it troubled her on such a … personal level. She’d only met Chestyr once, and despite his obviously keen intellect, he was still a scrubby schoolboy, all knees and elbows, with hair that stubbornly resisted the hardiest comb. His admiration for his magnificent older brother had been only too evident as well, and it had seemed as if there were far more than three years between him and Hektor.
That’s because he is a schoolboy, she realized, and Hektor—the Lieutenant, I mean—isn’t a boy … and hasn’t been since the battle of Darcos Sound, I imagine.