Midst Toil and Tribulation by David Weber
Much as Tympyltyn sometimes disliked Hamptyn, he couldn’t argue with the major’s conclusions. If the heretics could reopen the Taigyn River between Tabbard Reach and the Branath Mountains and retake Fort Tairys, they’d be able to use the river and the Branath Canal to move troops more rapidly between Glacierheart and the Gulf of Mathyas than the servants of Mother Church could possibly move overland. And the troops they were likely to be moving were the Godless, heretical Charisians with their demonically inspired weapons.
“You’re right,” he said, and drew a deep breath. “Send a runner, Colonel Ahdymsyn. We can’t wait for daylight, and our semaphore tower may not be here by morning. Get the message out that we’re under attack and the heretics are moving up the Taigyn in strength.”
* * *
“Think they’re getting the message, Sir?!”
Lieutenant Allayn Trumyn had to lean close to his captain’s ear to make himself heard over the thunder of the guns. HMS Volcano’s rifled angle-guns were reloading at the moment, but her sister ships Thunderer and Whirlwind were perfectly happy to fill the intervals of silence. And the four regular, smoothbore-armed galleons hammering the hulking fortifications fired far more rapidly than any of the bombardment ships. Their flatter fire and lighter, smoothbore shells had to be less effective than the angle-guns’ far heavier, plunging projectiles, but it certainly looked impressive as the scores of thirty-pounder shells exploded all across the face of the earth works the Temple Loyalist rebels had thrown up to screen the approaches to the fort.
“Oh, I imagine so.” Captain Zhorj Byrk had succeeded to Volcano’s command after Ahldahs Rahzwail’s promotion to flag rank. “It’s more spectacular than Iythria was, anyway,” he continued, watching the flames and smoke spiral up above the battered fortifications. “I’m a little surprised we found that much to burn, actually. Must be more wooden buildings than I thought. Looks like they figured out it’d be a good idea to protect their magazines better, though.” He shrugged. “Pity, that.”
“I bet they’re crapping themselves, though, Sir!” Trumyn shook his head. “I damned well would be!”
“That’s the idea, Allayn,” Byrk said. “That’s the idea.”
* * *
“Well,” Hauwerd Breygart said, “if things are going according to plan, that bastard Tympyltyn’s probably crapping himself about now.”
“Oh, I think we can take that pretty much as a given,” Sir Paitryk Hywyt replied.
The admiral stood beside the Earl of Hanth on the quarterdeck of HMS King Tymythy, and the night was very quiet. The only sounds were those of wind, wave, and sailing ships moving steadily through the darkness.
“I hope one of Byrk’s shells lands right on the bastard’s head,” Hanth said much more grimly.
In his previous career in the service of King Haarahld, Hauwerd Breygart had seldom hated any enemy personally. That wasn’t the case in this war—not with the stories coming out of the occupied provinces. And Erayk Tympyltyn’s men had distinguished themselves even among their fellow religious fanatics.
“It would be nice. I’ll settle for him sending the message, though.”
“So will I … but that doesn’t mean I don’t really wish it could come from his successor in command.”
Hywyt turned his head and smiled thinly at the Marine general in the light of the binnacle. The admiral appreciated a sneaky mind when he encountered one, and the supply galleons anchored safely out into the Taigyn estuary beyond the bombardment ships, certainly looked like troop transports. And to help underscore that appearance, Hanth had sent along barges and fishing boats gathered up all around Eralth Bay to suggest they’d be ferrying Marines ashore—or upriver—shortly. Actually, however, the only land forces Hanth had anywhere close to Fort Darymahn where the few hundred cavalry he’d been able to scrape up among the local Siddarmarkian forces and put ashore on a nicely deserted piece of Shreve Bay’s coastline a five-day and a half earlier. If all had gone according to plan, that cavalry had crossed the Taigyn River several days ago and was currently waiting near one of the towers in the chain connecting Fort Darymahn to the main semaphore network. They’d wait until Tympyltyn’s frantic report that he was about to be assaulted had time to get out to Fort Tairys, and then, sometime around midmorning, they’d burn the semaphore station in question. If possible, they’d burn a couple of more before they rode back to Shreve Bay for extraction.
The message should concentrate Temple Loyalist attention on Fort Darymahn and the line of the Taigys for at least the next several days. Which was the entire point, since in about another two hours, Hywyt’s flagship and the transports carrying seventy-five hundred Charisian Marines and armed seamen would pass through the sixteen-mile-wide channel into Thesmar Bay in complete darkness. The uninhabited marshes stretching for miles on either side of the channel would probably have precluded anyone’s noticing them, anyway, but there was no point taking chances. And with just a little luck, nobody on the other side would realize General Fyguera in Thesmar was about to receive a very potent reinforcement.
Besides, Hywyt thought with a slow smile, they’re going to be too busy looking east, towards Fort Darymahn, to be thinking about us. Which could be just a little unfortunate for them.
* * *
“God, that’s a sight for sore eyes.”
General Kydryc Fyguera’s voice was deep, befitting his bull-necked and bull-shouldered physique’s massive chest, but there was something else in it, Earl Hanth thought. Not quite a quaver, but something.
The two of them stood on a bastion of the entrenchments Fyguera had thrown up around the city of Thesmar’s landward side. Actually, calling Thesmar a city might have been a bit of an overstatement, but it certainly deserved the designation in South March terms. It had been a sleepy, provincial town before the Sword of Schueler, with relatively little commerce outside harvest season, when the produce shipped down the Seridahn and St. Alyk rivers to Thesmar Bay brought it to frenetic life.
Of course, that hadn’t happened this harvest season. And even if there’d been a harvest to ship, the Sword’s planners had devoted special attention to Thesmar as part of their efforts to cripple the food transportation system. The fighting had been especially ugly here, but Fyguera had somehow managed to hold four entire regiments of regulars together. Their discipline and training had been crucial in helping the loyal inhabitants of Thesmar and the surrounding portion of the South March Lands resist the tidal wave of rebels and mutineers.
In the end, the inhabitants of most of the small towns strung along the Seridahn and the St. Alyk between Thesmar and Cliff Peak had still refugeed out. Many had gone no farther than Thesmar, where the extra mouths had stretched rations even thinner, despite the normally abundant productivity of South March farms. Others had been lifted out by sea, carried as far as Eralth and then sent overland to what they hoped would be places of refuge in eastern Siddarmark. But Fyguera had held the critical posts between Thesmar, Fort Sheldyn, and Cliff Peak, imposing a barrier against any efforts to supply the Temple Loyalists east of the St. Alyk’s by water out of Dohlar.
Until recently.
Now Fyguera turned from watching the column of Marines (and somewhat less orderly column of seamen) marching up the high road towards Cheryk. The first of the naval thirty-pounders on improvised land carriages creaked past, drawn by one of the draft dragons Hanth had brought from Eralth, along with the fodder to keep them fed, and the Siddarmarkian general watched them go by, then looked Hanth in the eye.
“If the reports about the number of Dohlarans headed this way are accurate, General Hanth,” he said flatly, “they would’ve punched us out of Thesmar in a five-day. Especially since we have exactly eight old-style artillery pieces, and they’re big bastards, designed to cover the waterfront, not deal with infantry. If you hadn’t turned up.…”
He let his voice trail off, and Hanth nodded.
“I can’t guarantee we can hold the city even with my people, General,” he sai
“Good.” Fyguera’s satisfaction was clear, but then he glanced back at the marching column for a moment.
“I’m not sure the idea of marching out to meet the bastards is the best strategy, though, My Lord,” he said, and that whatever-it-was in his voice was stronger. “There have to be at least thirty or forty thousand of them already up to the line of the Seridahn, and the last report I had says their second wave’s lead regiments have to be almost to Evyrtyn. That’s another fifty-five thousand, and you’ve got less than eight. Even if I stripped the entire garrison out of Thesmar and sent it with you, you wouldn’t have more than twelve. And like you say, two-thirds of yours are sailors.”
“True,” Hanth looked unobtrusively past Fyguera to where Colonel Rahskho Gyllmyn, Fyguera’s second-in-command, stood at the Siddarmarkian’s shoulder, “but these sailors have rifles and they’ve been taught to shoot by Marines.” He smiled thinly. “I wouldn’t like to say it where it might go to their heads, but I’ll put them up against anything Dohlar’s got. Besides,” something cold and bleak replaced his smile, “a lot of these men served under Gwylym Manthyr. They’re looking for a little payback.”
“But—” Fyguera began, then stopped himself. “You’re senior, according to the Lord Protector,” he said, “and you know your men’s capabilities better than I do. Just … be careful, My Lord. You say your men are looking for payback? Well, so are most of mine after last winter. But I’ve discovered that’s not enough if there’s too many of the bastards on the other side.”
He held Hanth’s eye for a moment, then inhaled deeply and gave himself a shake.
“I understand your Commander Parkyr’s looking for the best places to put the guns you’re leaving behind. I have a few ideas on that topic myself,” his lips quirked in a smile that looked only slightly forced, “so I think I’ll just go have a word with him. If you have any needs, Rahskho will see to them for you. I hope you’ll at least have time for dinner before you head out? We’ve been on short rations for quite a while, and my cooks are looking forward to the supplies you’ve brought along. I did hear one of them asking what a ‘yam’ is, though, so I can’t promise what kind of results we’re going to get!”
“I look forward to it, General,” Hanth said, and Fyguera nodded and headed back into the city.
Hanth watched him go in silence, then turned and cocked an eyebrow at Rahskho Gyllmyn. The colonel—a militia officer, but one who looked tough, competent, and smart—looked back at him in matching silence for several seconds. Finally, he shrugged ever so slightly.
“I can’t say I disagree with the General entirely, General. About the numbers, I mean. But that’s not really all he’s thinking about.”
“I had that impression,” Hanth replied in a carefully neutral tone.
“Don’t get me wrong, General Hanth! That man’s been a giant when it came to holding this town. Drove us all like the wrath of God, too, while he was about it. Never rested, didn’t eat until everyone else had, and he was up before dawn every day. Not a man in this garrison wouldn’t die in his tracks for General Fyguera, and that’s a fact.”
“Colonel, nobody could’ve done what General Fyguera’s accomplished here without being something extraordinary. Trust me, I realize that. But even extraordinary people have limits.”
“Aye, they do,” Gyllmyn acknowledged after a moment. He looked away, watching the marching Marines and seamen. “I’ll not say he’s reached his, because I don’t think he has. But the strain’s showing. Three months ago, he’d’ve been trying to figure out how he could squeeze at least a few men out of the garrison to go with you. Now—?”
The colonel shrugged, and Hanth reached out to lay one hand on his forearm.
“Colonel Gyllmyn,” he said quietly, “you don’t have to defend him to me. You don’t have to think for a moment I don’t deeply respect what he—and you—have accomplished here in Thesmar. And you don’t have to think I’m worried over how much fire he has in his belly, either. The truth is, Thesmar’s his responsibility, and he’s entirely right to worry about its security first and foremost. And, to be honest, given the kind of battle I’m planning to fight, trying to figure out how to coordinate Siddarmarkian and Charisian tactics on the fly wouldn’t be a very good idea.” He smiled briefly. “But as for the rest of that, if what I just saw is all the ‘strain’ he’s showing, then that man is made out of steel, and he’ll do for me.”
Gyllmyn regarded him for a moment, and then he smiled back, slowly.
“Aye, he is that,” he said. “And I’ll tell you this, General. Don’t you worry about your rear while you’re out there. Thesmar’ll still be here when you come back, because ‘that man’ will hold it in the teeth of Shan-wei herself.”
.IX.
Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark
Greyghor Stohnar’s face was more deeply lined than ever.
The relief he’d felt when the Charisian food shipments arrived, the knowledge that the Charisian Expeditionary Force, as everyone had begun calling it, was en route from Chisholm, the enormous convoy loaded with weapons and munitions which would be arriving soon—all of it had helped ease the crushing burden of the winter just past. But the information coming in from the western provinces over the past three five-days seemed to mock the false hope those earlier reprieves had offered.
The army moving out of Lake City had swung one hook up into Icewind, clearly bent on crushing resistance in that lightly inhabited province, and the Icewinders who’d remained so stubbornly loyal to the Republic were fleeing for their lives. The province’s Temple Loyalists were openly celebrating the Army of God’s advance … and all too frequently ambushing their fleeing neighbors, or burning their houses behind them. The refugees were headed for Salyk, the province’s one real town, on Spinefish Bay, and at least transport galleons and warships of the Charisian Navy were available to lift them out by the thousand. Charisian seamen, the Icewind militia, and the handful of Marines remaining to the ICN galleons were going ashore in Salyk as well, and many of the fittest locals were assisting in the construction of the entrenchments going up around the town. It was possible they’d be able to hold Salyk—at least until the winter ice drove the navy out of Spinefish Bay—but all of the rest of the province would be in enemy hands by the end of July at the latest.
Nor was that all the bad news coming out of Tarikah. The second, and far more powerful, column from Lake City was driving hard down the Hildermoss River in barges, traveling at almost fifty miles a day along the river even against the current and obviously heading for the city of Guarnak and the Sylmahn Gap. According to their reports, Bishop Militant Bahrnabai was personally leading that column, and he should reach Guarnak before the end of the month.
Yet Bishop Militant Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s equally powerful army was almost worse. It was driving south along the Sair-Selkyr Canal towards the Daivyn River to link up with the Temple Loyalists who’d seized control of Westmarch over the winter, and none of their spies had predicted that. It clearly intended to hammer its way across the border into Cliff Peak from the north while the Dohlarans hooked up from the south to meet them and then—almost certainly—turn east and drive into Glacierheart, as well. Kaitswyrth was headed for the East Glacierheart mountains; if he took them, Glacierheart would be gone and there’d be no way in the world to save the loyal portions of Shiloh, either. And within only a few more days, Desnairian troops out of Silkiah would cross the Somyr River, moving between t
It was small wonder, Merlin thought, that a man who’d been a lifelong military professional should look at those odds and quail. Nimue Alban had seen even worse odds as the Gbaba tightened their noose around humanity’s home star system, but that was very little comfort, given how that campaign had turned out in the end.
“The arms convoy from Charis will be entering North Bay sometime day after tomorrow,” Daryus Parkair said, glancing through the notes he’d prepared for the daily briefing. “And according to the dispatch boat that arrived last night, Duke Eastshare should reach us a day or so after that.” He looked up from his notes. “That’s going to be a major increase in our combat power.”
“I know, Daryus,” Stohnar said. “And don’t think for in instant that I didn’t spend quite a while on my knees thanking Langhorne for it, but compared to the threat.….” He waved his hand at the huge map table and the tokens advancing ominously across the Republic. “And glad as I’ll be to see the Duke and his troops, they’ll be here, in Siddar City, a hell of a long way from Cliff Peak or even the Sylmahn Gap.”
“True,” Parkair agreed. “But at least the damage those idiots did to the canals in their own rear delayed them for almost a full month. Anybody who could pull a stunt like that is probably capable of fucking up in any number of other ways, as well.”
“Now there, Daryus, you have a point,” Stohnar acknowledged with a poison-dry smile. He looked down at the map for several more seconds, then raised his eyes to where Cayleb stood on the other side of the table.