By Heresies Distressed (54 page)

Some of the Marines had felt the emperor's precautions were excessive. Others had privately questioned whether their emperor, for all his prowess as an
admiral
, had enough of a landsman's eye for terrain to pick out actual observation points from a map. Any of those doubting souls, however, had been wise enough to keep their opinions to themselves. And Cayleb had covered himself just a bit by spending two days aboard one of the fleet's schooners, perched in her foretop—much to her skipper's considerable anxiety—personally surveying the coastline through a glass. The schooner had obviously been on “routine patrol,” without the crowned personal standard which officially indicated the emperor's presence on board, and Cayleb had dutifully jotted down an entire pad full of notes. No one else had to know that the content of those notes had actually been dictated to him by the
seijin
sitting beside him (ostensibly to make certain the emperor did nothing foolish, like tripping over his own feet and making a large, messy spot on the schooner's deck).

As it happened, Koryn Gahrvai was, indeed, “paranoid” enough to have arranged observation posts. He was only too well aware of the risk he'd taken by adopting his forward deployment in Talbor Pass, and he knew what could happen if a sufficiently large force could be landed in his rear. He had no intention of allowing Cayleb to do anything of the sort, however, and he'd established an entire series of interlocking lookout posts that stretched almost fifty miles westward along the Manchyr coast from the tip of the Dark Hill Mountains. Each of those posts was equipped with signal flags, and semaphore masts had been located at central points. He'd sought out the highest elevations he could find, in order to give his lookouts the greatest visual command of the waters of White Horse Reach, and given the relatively low speed of even Charisian galleons, those lookouts would give him a minimum of six hours' notice before any hostile landing could commence.

They were, of course, dependent upon daylight. If the Charisians were sufficiently confident to risk grounding by approaching the coast under cover of darkness and began landing at the very crack of dawn, they could deprive Gahrvai's sentinels of that half-dozen hours of approach time. But the lookouts would still be able to flash a warning to him long before any Charisian Marines could reach the southern terminus of Talbor Pass, especially without cavalry. Getting his own infantry out of the pass before the Charisians could seal it behind him would become a chancier proposition under those conditions, but he had posted Earl Windshare's cavalry to watch his back.

Overall, he had every reason to feel confident that any Charisians in his vicinity would be to the
east
of him, and he planned to keep them there. If they managed to flank him out of Talbor anyway, he intended to fall back as rapidly as possible on Manchyr and the extensive fieldworks whose construction around the capital his father had overseen. In the long run, any waiting game was in Corisande's favor, especially now that Anvil Rock knew about the Charisian rifles and had begun duplicating them. The one thing Corisande could not afford was the destruction or neutralization of Gahrvai's field force, and Gahrvai was supremely unconcerned by the very real possibility that anyone might question his courage for retreating from one heavily fortified position into another one in the face of an army little more than half the size of his own.

Unfortunately for Sir Koryn, he had no idea of the reconnaissance capabilities Merlin Athrawes made available to Cayleb Ahrmahk. Merlin had sat in on his staff and officers' meetings, had watched and analyzed each of his commanders, studying their strengths and weaknesses. He—and Cayleb, based on his reports—knew exactly why Gahrvai had made the command arrangements he had, and, overall, Cayleb would probably have made the same ones, given the same conditions. But the emperor also knew from Merlin's reports that there was a potentially fatal flaw in Gahrvai's command structure, and that was the reason he'd had Merlin pinpoint every one of the Corisandians' observation posts. Merlin had also plotted their lines of communication and located the positions of the semaphores which formed those lines' central nodes. And equipped with that information, Cayleb had planned the nocturnal landings which had put Sergeant Wystahn and his fellows ashore.

He'd been very careful to select some “suspected lookout posts” where, in fact, no one had ever been posted. And he'd been equally careful
not
to select several which did exist but which reported through one of the central nodes rather than having a direct signal link to Gahrvai's army. It would never have done for him to have unerringly dispatched attacks against
every
observation post, any more than it would have done for him not to have come up dry at least once or twice. Hopefully, no one would notice that the
only
ones he'd missed “just happened” to be unable to tell anyone what they'd seen by signal. Runners were something he couldn't do anything about, but it would take a minimum of several hours for anyone from the surviving positions to get word to Gahrvai—and that assumed the runners in question figured out what was happening and headed directly for Talbor Pass instead of first running over to check on why the relay post to which they'd reported hadn't acknowledged their signals.

It wasn't a perfect solution to the problem. It was simply a solution which not even the wisest and most cunning of enemy commanders could possibly have seen coming.

Gahrvai's good enough to deserve better than this
, Cayleb thought.
It feels like cheating. But, as Merlin says, if I'm not cheating, I'm not trying hard enough
.

The emperor turned his head to sweep his eyes across the eastern horizon one more time. The sky was definitely beginning to brighten, and additional galleons were becoming visible beyond
Dauntless
. There'd be enough light for his needs by the time the assault boats reached the beaches, he decided, and walked across the broad quarterdeck to Captain Gyrard. The sound of his heels on the dew-slick planking was the only sound which was not born of wind or sea, and the flag captain came to respectful attention as Cayleb stopped in front of him.

“Very well, Captain Gyrard,” the emperor said formally. “Show the signal.”

“Aye, aye, Your Majesty.” Gerard touched his shoulder in salute and nodded to Lieutenant Lahsahl.

A moment later, the lit signal lanterns went soaring up to
Empress of Charis'
mizzen peak.

“Now isn't that a pretty sight?” Edvarhd Wystahn murmured.

He stood on the rock where the Corisandian lookout had been perched the night before, and he had to admit that the fellow had had a breathtaking view out across the sparkling waters of White Horse Reach. At the moment, Wystahn had come into possession of that view, however, and he suspected that its former owner would have been much unhappier than he was at what he saw so far below him.

The transport galleons lay anchored or hove-to while their own boats pulled strongly towards the shore. The flat-bottomed assault boats had already landed the men they'd brought with them all the way from Dairos, and delighted they must have been to hit the sand, Wystahn thought with a grin. Those assault boats had amply proven their worth, but they were Shan-wei's own bitch in any sort of seaway, and it was as certain as anything could possibly be that at least one or two of the embarked Marines aboard any one of them would fall victim to seasickness.

And once the first poor unhappy sod pukes, everyone starts to. I'll bet every one of 'em was grass-green and heaving by the time they got ashore!

If so, they'd shown no sign of it as the first wave of infantry formed up into columns and headed inland. The boats had landed Brigadier Clareyk's Third Brigade and Brigadier Haimyn's Fifth Brigade first, followed by Brigadier Zhosh Makaivyr's First Brigade. Now those six thousand men were spreading out to screen the inland side of the landing zone while their assault boats headed out to the waiting galleys to help fetch the other nine thousand men prepared to come ashore behind them.

Personally, Wystahn figured the odds were less than even that they were going to manage to fully pull off the emperor's plans. There was too much chance that they'd missed an observation post, or that some random cavalryman would stumble across them, or that some inland signal post would spot them before they could get fully around into the Corisandians' rear. But that was fine with Edvarhd Wystahn. If it worked, it worked, and the war would probably be well on its way to being over. And even if it didn't work, it would force the Corisandians to pull out of that damnable position in the pass without Wystahn and his fellow Marines being forced to assault those formidable earthworks head-on. Which meant Ahnainah Wystahn, of the Earldom of Lochair, was much less likely to find herself a widow.

“What?!”

Koryn Gahrvai stared at his aide. The lieutenant looked back mutely, his eyes huge, then held out a sheet of paper.

“Here's the signal, Sir,” he said.

Gahrvai managed—somehow—to not quite snatch the paper out of the young man's hand. He stepped closer to the open fly of the command tent to get better light, and his eyes flashed over the lines of smudgy pencil. Then he read it again. And a third time.

It didn't get any better.

He raised his head, gazing sightlessly out of the tent at the everyday business of the encampment around him for what seemed a short eternity. Then he turned back to the senior officers' conference which had just been so abruptly interrupted.

“Somehow, Cayleb's gotten round behind us,” he said harshly.

Heads jerked up in disbelief, and the officers standing around the map table looked back at him with expressions which were almost as stunned as
he
felt.

Baron Barcor's expression went a bit further than that, however.
His
face froze for a heartbeat, and then Gahrvai could actually see the blood flowing out of it as it turned the color of cold, congealed gravy. Which was scarcely reassuring, given the fact that Barcor had been promoted to command the entire army's rear guard after his performance at Haryl's Crossing. Gahrvai had picked him for the position because it was prestigious enough to serve as an ostensible reward for the man while actually making him, in effect, a mere administrator for the forward positions' reserves. Gahrvai had never intended to commit any of “Barcor's” men to action under the baron's own command; instead, he'd planned to slice off battalions and regiments as required and “temporarily” assign them to the command of men like Earl Mancora.

Mancora, who'd been slightly wounded at Haryl's Crossing but had somehow made it back to the rear with a pitiful handful of his wing, looked equally astounded, but lacked the “stunned draft dragon” expression in Barcor's eyes. Unfortunately, Mancora had been assigned to command the farthest
forward
of the positions in Talbor Pass.

Which means I've got exactly the wrong men in exactly the wrong places . . . again
, Gahrvai thought bitterly.
Mancora would have his men on the road within the hour. Langhorne only knows how long it's going to take
Barcor
to get his arse in motion!

“How bad is it, Sir?” Mancora asked quietly.

“I'm not sure,” Gahrvai admitted. “According to this, though,” he waved the dispatch, “they somehow got ashore in the sector closest to the pass without a single one of our observation posts warning us.”

“But that's
impossible
!” Barcor blurted, then added a hasty “Sir.”

“That's exactly what I would have thought,” Gahrvai agreed grimly. “Unfortunately, we'd both be wrong, My Lord. They must have landed right at dawn. How they managed to eliminate our lookouts before they got a single message out is more than I could say, but from this, they're already within fifteen or twenty miles of the western end of the pass.”