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  * * *

  Young Pahloahzky must’ve had a devastating throw to first, Zyworya thought, watching another rock crash up into the foliage. And the kid was obviously enjoying himself, too. It was pretty clear that whatever he thought he’d seen must have moved on by now—there’d been enough rocks up there to cause just about any critter he could think of to break cover! But he might as well let the boy have his fun, and the rest of the squad was grinning as widely as he was.

  Another couple of rocks, he decided, and then we’ll—

  The next rock thwacked into the titan oak’s bark and Pahloahzky stooped for another. The private was just straightening back up and Zyworya turned to tell him this would be the last one when something else cracked sharply.

  That small turn saved Zyworya’s life. The half-inch rifle bullet which would otherwise have struck him squarely in the chest slammed into his breastplate at an angle, instead. It was still like being hit with a sledgehammer that drove him back three strides, and Shyman Pahloahzky clutched at his butchered face with both hands as the flattened, ricocheting projectile hit him below his right eye. He went down, hitting the leaves, his hands suddenly crimson while he screamed, and Zyworya’s head snapped up and to the right.

  A cloud of smoke hung above one of those clumps of blue leaf in the Ahstynwood’s sun-and-shade spangled air. It was a good hundred and fifty yards away across the leaf carpet, and he couldn’t see a single sign of whoever had fired that rifle. But he didn’t have to see the shooter.

  “Right flank—hundred and fifty yards!” he snapped. “Myndaiz, take first section and find his arse! Second section with me! Go!”

  The corporal—he should’ve been a sergeant, but the platoon had received only six replacements, none sergeants, since the bitter fight to take the heretics’ redoubts—responded instantly. Five members of his understrength squad took the lead, swinging to the right and moving forward at a half run, bayoneted rifles ready, while the remaining five followed Zyworya, more slowly, prepared to engage with fire. The platoon sergeant heard Lieutenant Byrokyo’s voice behind him, snapping orders to Corporal Nytzah’s squad. His own brain was too focused on the task at hand to pay much attention to the lieutenant’s commands, but after so long together, he knew they were the right ones.

  Pahloahzky was still screaming, and Zyworya found a corner of his brain marveling yet again at how slowly seconds could pass at moments like this. He’d never realized how flexible time really was until he’d spent an eternity in howling combat only to discover it had been less than fifteen minutes … or seen a score of men killed in the blink of an eye.

  Myndaiz’ section was halfway to the dissipating smoke cloud when a dozen more rifles fired. They were at least eighty yards south of the first one, stretched in an east-west line almost exactly at right angles to Myndaiz’ line of advance. Three of his five men went down instantly, and at least three rounds hit Myndaiz himself. The squad’s two survivors wheeled instinctively towards whoever had just massacred the remainder of its men … and a half-dozen more rifles fired.

  The entire section was down, Zyworya realized sickly. Two of them were still moving, crawling painfully back towards him, leaving trails of blood behind them, and he couldn’t see a thing. The shooters had to be out there—he could see their smoke—but he couldn’t see them!

  “Covering fire!” he barked, and three of the five men with him fired. They had no better target than the drifting smoke clouds, but whoever was behind those rifles had to be reloading—just as Zyworya was—and he wasn’t going to go charging further forward with only five men when at least four times that many were waiting in concealment.

  He heard Byrokyo and Nytzah’s squad coming up behind him, pushing along the narrow trail between the encroaching banks of blue leaf, then flinched as several more rifles fired from a line extending at least fifty yards to either side of the first shooter’s position. Another man, this one from Myndaiz’ second section, stumbled backwards, ramrod flying from his hands, and collapsed with a bubbling moan, and Zyworya swore viciously. The blue leaf offered partial concealment, but it was about as effective as a sheet of paper when it came to actually stopping bullets, and the tactical situation sucked. Despite the relative openness of the woodland beyond the titan oak, the terrain was too broken for them to form any kind of properly ordered line, and advancing was going to be an ugly business if they couldn’t even see the heretics! But if they established a firing position here, right around the titan oak, and sent back to Captain Ingrayahn, the rest of the company could come up and—

  * * *

  Lahzrys Mahntsahlo bared his teeth.

  He really wished the Temple Boys had simply walked on by his tree. Their persistence had knocked that on the head, though. The members of his squad, unable to see exactly how close the thrown rocks had been creeping towards his own position and with no evidence the enemy planned on moving on anytime soon, had opened the ambush quite a bit earlier than he and Corporal Sayranoh had intended. They’d planned to catch as much as possible of the AOG company on the trail; now it looked like they were going to have to settle for a single one of the AOG’s small-sized platoons.

  On the other hand, the L-shaped “fire sack” had worked just fine. The Temple Boys still hadn’t realized there were two full squads of scout snipers hidden out there in what Baron Green Valley had dubbed “ghillie suits.” Mahntsahlo had no idea where the name came from, but he’d been astonished by how invisible one of them could make someone. It broke up the wearer’s outline in three dimensions, blending him seamlessly into almost any background once it was properly customized. Of course, it couldn’t hide the smoke when someone fired, but it was obvious the Temple Boys still hadn’t figured out how readily a Mahndrayn could be used from a prone position. Probably because they’d only gone up against them when they assaulted Brigadier Taisyn’s Marines in their entrenched position, he thought. Not having encountered them in the open—yet—they couldn’t truly begin to imagine all the advantages breech-loading offered. There were dips and hollows in any terrain, and the blind fire from the lead squad’s survivors was all going high, obviously looking for the riflemen they assumed must be standing to reload behind trees or one of the scattered clumps of blue leaf. There was, after all, a reason the scout snipers had concealed themselves near exactly those sorts of cover.

  Of course, there was also a reason they’d chosen this particular spot for their ambush, and Mahntsahlo peered down, watching the rest of the Temple Boy platoon stacking up in the narrow, slot-like trail where the much denser thickets of blue leaf concealed them from the Charisian riflemen. He could’ve wished for a bigger bag, but every little bit helped.

  The corporal waited another moment, then pulled the preposterously thin strand of braided steel thistle which had been dyed in suitable woodland colors to make it invisible against the thick, rough bark of the titan oak.

  * * *

  Nycodem Zyworya never saw the cord move. He had no way of knowing it was connected to the percussion cap–armed lock mechanism spiked to the ground in a concealing drift of leaves at the base of the titan oak. Nor did he know about the length of quick match leading away from that lock mechanism to the devices the Charisian Army had nicknamed “Shan-wei’s sweepers,” or simply “sweepers,” for short, hidden in the blue leaf on either side of the trail where 2nd Platoon’s survivors were bunched together.

  On a planet called Earth, those sweepers might have been called “claymore mines,” instead. They were less efficient than their ancient ancestors because their designers had been limited to black powder rather than more sophisticated explosives, yet they were fully adequate for the task. Spaced twenty yards apart on center, each of the concave directional mines hurled five hundred and seventy-six .50 caliber shrapnel balls in a sixty-degree, cone-shaped blast pattern, and there were five of them on each side of the trail, set back twenty yards into the blue leaf to assure maximum dispersion. On average, each yard of the covered trail received forty
-eight balls, traveling horizontally at just over fifteen hundred feet per second.

  There were no survivors.

  .III.

  Charisian Embassy, Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark

  “So you think Kaitswyrth’s going to go ahead and push it anyway?”

  “Well, actually, yes,” Merlin Athrawes said, looking across the table at Emperor Cayleb Ahrmahk.

  A bottle of Empress Sharleyan’s favorite Chisholmian whiskey sat between them, and in his empress’s absence, Cayleb had indulged his barbarian Old Charisian habits. The ice clinked as he raised the glass and took another sip, and Merlin sat back, cradling his own glass between his hands. PICAs were not subject to inebriation. Merlin couldn’t say he much missed the experience, although there were occasions when he would have liked to be able to “drink to forget,” but he still treasured the social experience and a PICA’s full sensory capability allowed him to savor the honeyed fire of a truly excellent whiskey.

  Without the ice, in his own case.

  “And you do, too, Nahrmahn?” Cayleb asked.

  “Yes.”

  Nahrmahn’s response was both quicker and more confident than Merlin’s as it came over the transparent plug in Cayleb’s ear. The emperor raised an eyebrow, and the image of Nahrmahn projected onto his contact lenses shrugged. The Emeraldian prince nursed a glass of his own whiskey and his electronic persona, unlike Merlin, was quite capable of becoming tipsy if he imbibed enough of it. At the moment, however, his expression was serious, even somber.

  “I know Colonel Makyn and his scout snipers’ve been handing his probes their heads,” he said. “And left to his own devices, Kaitswyrth’s probably smart enough to decide that ramming directly into Duke Eastshare would be a really bad idea. But that zealotry and bigotry of his make him want to push forward no matter what, and he’s not being left to his own devices. With Clyntahn’s not so gentle prods reinforcing his own inclinations, there’s a damned good chance he’ll ignore good sense and come ahead whatever happens to his patrols.”

  “If he does, he’s going to think what the scout snipers’ve already done to him was a love tap,” Cayleb pointed out.

  “Probably. The catch is that he doesn’t know that yet, and in a lot of ways, logic is the least important of his problem-solving skills at the moment.” Nahrmahn grimaced and sipped whiskey, then shrugged. “I won’t go so far as to guarantee he won’t suffer an attack of common sense, but it’s not very likely.”

  “And he’s right about the difference between his supply situation and Wyrshym’s.” Merlin’s grimace was far more sour than Nahrmahn’s had been. “In fact, he’s more right about that than he realizes, since he doesn’t know Ahlverez’s going to be redirected from Alyksberg. I don’t see the Dohlarans catching up with Sumyrs, but Ahlverez is sure as hell going to try. And with Harless’ ‘Army of Justice’ coming up from Desnair, Thesmar—and Earl Hanth—are likely to find themselves a lot busier than any of us would like.”

  “All we can do is all we can do,” Cayleb said, rather more philosophically than he felt. “At least we’ve got naval support in Thesmar Bay, and by this time Fyguera has the better part of two hundred thirty-pounders dug in on the city’s approaches, with plenty of ammo to keep them fed.” The emperor showed his teeth in an evil smile. “I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t want to launch any assaults into that much firepower!”

  “Neither would I,” Merlin agreed. “On the other hand, while I’m in a sort of Shan-wei’s advocate sort of mood, I might point out that unlike the Army of God or the Desnairians, Ahlverez has those damned howitzers of Thirsk’s.”

  “And his field howitzers are supposed to smash Fyguera’s fortifications exactly how?” Cayleb asked quizzically.

  “I did say I was in Shan-wei’s advocate mode,” Merlin pointed out, and the emperor chuckled.

  “That doesn’t mean Hanth couldn’t still find himself in a world of trouble if he lets himself be surprised by Ahlverez coming down from the north, Rychtyr pushing out of Trevyr from the west, and Harless coming up from the south, though,” Merlin went on more somberly. “I know. I know! He’s too good and too smart to let something like that happen to him, especially with our ‘spies’ ’ reports about what’s headed his way. But even the best, smartest people can screw up, and that doesn’t even consider the sorts of problems things like weather could make for him. So if it’s all right with the two of you, I’ll just quietly go on worrying about it until we know for sure that it’s not going to happen.”

  “I see your point, but there are other things I’m more inclined to worry about than the possibility of Hauwerd Breygart’s brain suddenly turning into bean soup,” Cayleb said dryly. “Like how are we going to feed everybody this winter. Especially after General Symkyn gets here with the rest of the first wave.”

  Merlin nodded, although he was more inclined to look on the bright side of Symkyn’s arrival with the nearly sixty thousand troops embarked aboard his transports. Besides, a mere sixty thousand additional mouths wasn’t going to matter much against the scale of feeding the entire loyal population of the Republic of Siddarmark after the ravages of the past winter and spring.

  “It’s not going to be as bad as it was this year, Cayleb,” Nahrmahn said. “Of course, I realize ‘not as bad as’ a nightmare like last winter isn’t much of a recommendation, but Owl and I just finished a survey, and the winter wheat crop’s actually a bit better than Stohnar and Maidyn’ve been estimating. A lot smaller than last year’s, of course, but remember how much of that got burned in the granaries. The spring wheat’s going to be ready to harvest in the southern Republic by early September, too, and there’s going to be a lot more of it in the eastern provinces than there was last year. Still not enough to compensate for loss of all those western farms, especially not with the population shift to the east, but Owl and I calculate that between what’s already harvested and what we can expect to see from the fall harvest, the Republic’s going to come within about ten percent of being able to meet its own domestic wheat requirements. The corn and potato crops are looking a lot better, and soybean production’s up by better than sixty percent in the eastern provinces over last year’s levels. Livestock levels are still way down—Owl’s estimating it’ll take at least three years to build back the stocks that were depleted over the winter—but we’ve managed to import enough cows to at least get dairy production back on its feet. The reduction in meat production’s going to help the fodder situation, too; with so many fewer draft and meat animals, the demand for hay and feed grain will be down substantially. The uptick in poultry production’s going to cut into that some, but not enough to really notice. And we’ve got more time to organize food purchases and convoys from Charis, Emerald, and Tarot than we had last year.” He shrugged. “The truth is, we ought to be able to feed everyone over this winter. Not with the kind of variety we might wish for, but with enough calories—and enough vitamins—to prevent outright starvation from claiming any more lives. It depends on the weather, of course, but farmers always depend on the weather. And I’m pretty sure Baron Ironhill won’t be devastated to find our imperial farmers will still have a market for all that additional production they’ve been cranking out.”

  “That’s probably true,” Cayleb acknowledged with a crooked smile. “He’s been talking about engineering a ‘soft landing’ for the agricultural sector ever since Ehdwyrd suggested the term to him.”

  “Then we’re probably in about as good a shape as we’re likely to see,” Merlin said. The emperor gave him an incredulous look, and he shrugged. “I’m not saying we’re in good shape, Cayleb—just that the shape we’re in is probably as good as it’s likely to get … and one hell of a lot better than last year. I’m fully aware of how much room for improvement there still is.”

  “Good. For a moment I was wondering if you’d lost your electronic mind.”

  “As if you and our pushy, portly little friend were prepared to let that happen!” Merlin
snorted.

  “I do have two or three other little tidbits to add,” Nahrmahn said, recapturing their attention.

  “Your idea of ‘little tidbits’ is enough to make anyone who knows you nervous whenever they hear something like that,” Cayleb said. “What is it this time?”

  “Well, it happens that I’ve had Owl doing some research for me. The sorts of things Merlin’s never really had time for, given how busy he’s been putting out forest fires. And we’ve turned up some interesting items. For example, do either of you know why Silverlode Island is named Silverlode Island?”

  “Because of the color of the sand.” Cayleb shrugged. “Every Charisian—I mean, every Old Charisian—knows that.”

  Merlin nodded, but he was looking at Nahrmahn’s image with an intent, speculative expression. The enormous island east of Charis was very sparsely populated, thanks in no small part to the ruggedness of its interior and the fact that so little of its territory had yet been “consecrated,” or terraformed for human occupation. Personally, Merlin had always thought of it more as “East Charis” than as an island in its own right, and Cayleb’s ancestors had always regarded it mainly as a place population could expand to … someday, and otherwise pretty much ignored it. Technically, it wasn’t even a part of the Charisian Empire, although that was a meaningless distinction, since “Duke of Silverlode” was one of Cayleb’s secondary titles and everyone who lived on it owed the House of Ahrmahk personal fealty despite the minor fact that their home island had never been formally integrated into the Kingdom of Charis. In effect, Silverlode belonged outright to Cayleb in his own person rather than to the crown of Charis, and no one had ever been in any hurry to regularize that, since there were less than fifteen thousand people living on an island more than half the size of Old Earth’s continent of Australia.