How Firm a Foundation (27 page)

“Now that’s a profound sort of question, the sort of thing I might have expected out of a Schuelerite!” Byrkyt smiled back and cuffed the younger priest gently on the side of his head. “And, like any profound question, I’m sure it has a profound answer … somewhere. But only time will tell, I suppose.” His smile turned softer, and the hand which had smacked Paityr’s head so lightly
moved to cup the side of his face, instead. “Only time will tell.”

MAY,
YEAR OF GOD 895

.I.

The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands

“Well, you were right, Rhobair,” Zhaspahr Clyntahn said caustically. “I know
I
feel a whole lot better now that we’ve gotten the complete report. Don’t you?”

The Grand Inquisitor’s sarcasm was even more biting than usual … not that it came as a surprise. In fact, if Rhobair Duchairn was surprised by anything it was that Clyntahn wasn’t throwing
a full-fledged tantrum.

Of course there’s time for that still,
he reminded himself.
We’re only just getting started. Langhorne knows where he’s going to go before we get
finished
this afternoon!

“No, Zhaspahr,” he said as calmly as he could. “It doesn’t make me feel much better. It does confirm some things, though … including the fact that Allayn’s plan to misdirect the Charisians seems to have
worked. I can’t believe someone like Cayleb would have sent less than thirty of his ships to intercept a
hundred
and thirty of our own if he hadn’t been caught completely on the wrong foot.”

“Why not?” Clyntahn demanded bitterly. “Their ‘less than thirty’ seem to’ve kicked our hundred and thirty’s ass pretty damn thoroughly.” He glared at Maigwair. “They didn’t
need
to send any more ships than
they did. God! It’s
pathetic!
”

“Zhaspahr,” Duchairn said, “you can’t blame men for losing a battle when they suddenly come up against a weapon that causes their own ships to blow up under them. Especially when they didn’t have any idea it was coming! I don’t know about you, but if I expected someone to be firing round shot at
me
and instead they were firing some kind of ammunition that
exploded
the minute it hit my ship, I’d find that fairly disconcerting. In fact, I’d find it downright
terrifying!
”

“The fucking cowards were supposed to be Temple Guardsmen!” Clyntahn snarled, his face darkening dangerously. He seemed even angrier than the failure of one of his plans usually made him feel. “They’re God’s own warriors, damn it, not little children seeing
fireworks
for the first time!”

Duchairn started to fire back a quick, angry response, but he caught himself in time. Pushing Clyntahn over the brink would do nothing but get someone killed. Still.…

“Perhaps you’re right about that,” the Treasurer said instead of what he’d started to say. “At the same time, do you think it would really have made a lot of difference if Harpahr had tried to fight to the last ship?” Clyntahn looked
at him incredulously, and Duchairn held up both hands. “All right, I’ll give you that if they had, the Charisians wouldn’t have gained all the ships that surrendered. I have to say, though, that reading Searose’s report, I don’t see how Harpahr could have kept his ships from striking their colors however hard he’d tried. I’m not condoning their cowardice, Zhaspahr. I’m simply saying that human
nature being human nature, Harpahr
couldn’t
have stopped it. Not when the Charisians’ new weapons came as a total surprise.”

“I am getting damned sick and tired of every fucking new Charisian weapon coming ‘as a total surprise,’” Clyntahn grated.

“If it’s any consolation, I think this one must’ve been pretty close to a surprise for the Charisians, too,” Duchairn replied.

“What the hell are
you talking about now?” Clyntahn demanded.

“I think it’s pretty obvious they haven’t had it for very long,” Duchairn said. “If they had, we’d have already seen it in action. For that matter, they wouldn’t have tried something as desperate as a point-blank engagement in the middle of the night. If they had the ability to stand off and fire these explosive shot or whatever they are, why should
they have closed? They sailed right into the middle of our ships—so close they were fighting old-fashioned
boarding actions,
Zhaspahr. It’s right here in Searose’s report.”

“So what?” Clyntahn waved a dismissive hand.

“Rhobair has a point,” Allayn Maigwair said. The Grand Inquisitor rounded on him, but Maigwair stood his ground. “I’ve read the reports, too, Zhaspahr. Everything the Charisians
have done from Armageddon Reef and Crag Reach on has been built around artillery, not boarding actions. Oh, there’ve been boardings in most of the engagements, but they were the exceptions. Either that or they were the ‘tidying up,’ taking prizes which had already been battered into effective surrender with the guns. And the main reasons that’s been the case are that the Charisians are more experienced
than almost anyone else they’ve fought and that they have less manpower than we do. However good they may be in boarding melees, the last thing they want to do is to come to us in the kind of fight that lets us trade casualties one-for-one with them, and they’ve built all their tactics around
avoiding
that kind of battle. But that’s exactly what they were doing against Harpahr’s fleet.”

“Sure
it was … until they turned around and blew the shit out of him!” Clyntahn said impatiently.

“That’s not what Allayn’s trying to tell you, Zhaspahr.” Somehow Duchairn managed to keep his frustration out of his tone. “What he’s telling you is that an
outnumbered
Charisian fleet fought
our
kind of battle … until it managed to get the bulk of Harpahr’s fleet into artillery range. They didn’t switch
to this new weapon until then, and they have to have taken serious casualties before they did. That suggests that whatever it is they were using, they didn’t have a lot of it. They decided they had to make every shot count, and the only way to do that was to come to us—take their licks on the way in and hope they could finish us off with one or two good, heavy punches once they got inside our reach.”

Clyntahn glowered at him, but from the Grand Inquisitor’s expression, there was at least a possibility his brain was beginning to work. It might even be beginning to work well enough to overcome his ire, although Duchairn wouldn’t have cared to bet on the possibility.

“I think Rhobair’s right, Zhaspahr,” Maigwair said now. “There’s no way we can know how much they actually had of whatever special
ammunition they were using, but the indications are that they didn’t have anywhere near as much of it as they would’ve liked. From Searose’s report, it’s obvious he doesn’t know what percentage of their total fleet had it, but he says he personally saw at least four of their galleons which were still firing normal round shot even after our ships had started to explode. As a matter of fact, I
was impressed by the fact that he was able to keep his wits about himself well enough to notice that.”

“And that’s one reason I think Allayn’s misdirection with the sailing orders actually worked,” Duchairn said, piling on while the piling was good. “If they only had a handful of ships which were able to use this weapon, for whatever reason, then they would
certainly
have concentrated as many
as possible of their regular galleons to support that handful. They didn’t. To me, that seems to indicate their spies did pick up Harpahr’s original orders to sail west. They must have sent a major portion of their fleet east in response to that. It’s the only explanation for why they didn’t close in on Harpahr with everything they had.”

“What about that blockade of theirs?” Clyntahn challenged
in a marginally calmer tone. “According to Jahras and Kholman they must have had at least forty galleons off the Gulf of Jahras. Maybe
that’s
where your missing ships were.”

“It could’ve been, but I don’t think it was,” Maigwair said. “I’ve been going over their reports, too, and they never actually saw the majority of those ‘war galleons’ at all. What they saw were masts and sails on the horizon,
and don’t forget the way Haarahld used merchant galleons to convince Black Water that Cayleb’s galleons were with his fleet in the Sea of Charis when they were actually off ambushing Malikai off Armageddon Reef. I think this may have been more of the same, and I don’t really see how anyone can blame them for being fooled under the circumstances.”

“Maybe,” Clyntahn said grudgingly.

“It works
with what we know of the timing,” Duchairn said, nodding at Maigwair. “Their spy network’s obviously as good as we thought it was. We fooled them with Allayn’s original orders, and that drew their main fleet out of position. But then their spies realized we’d misled them and reported Harpahr’s real sailing orders in time for them to realize what was happening. Only they still didn’t have time to get
recall orders to the ships they’d already sent off, so they put together a ‘fleet’ of merchant galleons to convince Jahras and Kholman they couldn’t fight their way out to sea while they scraped up everything they had—including the handful of ships they could equip with their new weapon—and threw them directly into Harpahr’s teeth. If their weapon hadn’t worked, we would’ve had them, Zhaspahr.
It’s that simple, and that’s how close we came to accomplishing exactly what you originally proposed to do.”

For a moment, he was afraid that last sentence had been too blatant an appeal to Clyntahn’s ego. But then he saw the Grand Inquisitor nodding slowly and more thoughtfully. Clyntahn didn’t look one bit less angry, but at least he’d lost some of the dangerous, saw-toothed rage which had
been riding him with spurs of fire.

“All right,” he said, “but even if you’re right, the fact remains that we’ve suffered yet another defeat at the hands of heretics and apostates. The way we seem to keep stumbling from one disaster to another is bound to have an impact on even the most faithful if it goes on long enough. In fact, my inquisitors’ reports indicate that that process may already
have begun.”

“That’s a serious concern,” Zahmsyn Trynair said, entering the conversation for the first time. Duchairn tried not to glare at the Chancellor, but he supposed it was better Trynair should come late to the party than stay home entirely.

“That’s a
very
serious concern,” Trynair repeated now. “What do you mean the ‘process’ may already have begun, Zhaspahr?”

“We’re not seeing a sudden
upsurge in heresy, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Clyntahn said. “Aside, of course,” he darted a venomous look at Duchairn and Trynair, “from the increasing number of ‘Reformists’ surfacing in Siddarmark, that is. But what we
are
seeing is what I suppose it would be fairest to call demoralization. People are seeing that despite the fact that we hugely outnumber the heretics, they keep winning
battle after battle. Despite our best efforts, the casualty and prisoner totals from this latest debacle are going to get out, you know, and when they do, people are going to compare them to how little
we’ve
had to show for our efforts to date. Don’t think for a moment that it isn’t going to encourage the weak-hearted to feel even more despondent. In fact, it’s likely to start undermining support
for the jihad in general. At the very least”—he paused for a moment, letting his eyes circle the table—“it’s going to begin to undermine confidence in the jihad’s
direction
.”

Duchairn felt Trynair and Maigwair settle into sudden, frozen stillness. There was no mistaking Clyntahn’s implication.

“I scarcely think,” the Treasurer said into the silence, choosing his words with excruciating care,
“that anyone within the vicarate is likely to challenge our direction of the jihad.”

After all,
he added silently,
you’ve slaughtered anybody who might have the courage or the wit to breathe a word about how thoroughly
we’ve
bungled things, haven’t you, Zhaspahr?

“I’m not talking about the vicarate.” There was something smug—and ugly—about the Grand Inquisitor’s assurance, Duchairn thought,
but then Clyntahn continued. “I’m worried about people
outside
the vicarate. I’m worried about all the bastards in Siddarmark and Silkiah who’re going their merry way violating the embargo every day. I’m worried about the upsurge in ‘Reformist’ propaganda that’s turning up in Siddarmark … and other realms, according to my inquisitors. Places like Dohlar and Desnair, for example—even the Temple
Lands! And I’m worried about people who are going to lose heart because Mother Church seems unwilling to reach out her hand and smite the ungodly.”

“We’ve been
trying
to smite the ungodly,” Duchairn pointed out, trying to disguise the sinking sensation he felt. “The problem is that it hasn’t been working out very well despite our best efforts.”

“The
problem
,” Clyntahn said, his tone and expression
both unyielding, “is that we haven’t reached out to the ungodly we
can
reach. The ungodly right here on the mainland.”

“Like who, Zhaspahr?” Trynair asked.

“Like Stohnar and his bastard friends, for one,” Clyntahn shot back. His lips twisted, but then he made them untwist with a visible act of will. “But that’s all right, I understand why we can’t touch them right now. The three of you have
made that
abundantly
clear. I won’t pretend it doesn’t piss me off, and I won’t pretend I don’t think it’s ultimately a mistake. But I’m willing to concede the point—for now, at least—where Siddarmark and Silkiah are concerned.”

Duchairn’s heart plunged as he realized where Clyntahn was headed. He couldn’t even pretend it was a surprise, despite the sickness in his belly.

“I’m talking about
those prisoners Thirsk took last year,” Clyntahn went on flatly. “The ones he’s somehow persistently managed not to hand over to the Inquisition or send to the Temple. They’re
heretics,
Zahmsyn. They’re rebels against God Himself, taken in the act of rebellion! My God, man—how much more evidence do you
need
? If Mother Church can’t act against
them
, then who
can
she act against? Do you think there
aren’t thousands—
millions—
of people who aren’t asking themselves that very question right this moment?”