David Weber - How firm a foundation

“I know,” Cayleb sighed. “I know.” He shook his head. “And speaking of personal viewpoints, think about his family. They didn’t lose just him, but his cousin, too.” He shook his head again, his expression hard. “I want the people responsible for planning this. I want them badly.”

“Then we’ll just have to see what we can do about finding them for you, Your Majesty,” Prince Nahrmahn said. . VI.

Shakym, Princedom of Tanshar

“All right, you lazy bastards! On your feet! Your little pleasure cruise just came to an end!”

Sir Gwylym Manthyr’s head twitched up at the raucous chorus of shouts. He could see virtually nothing in the hot, stinking tween-decks space, but he heard the thud of hammers as the wedges which secured the hatch battens were driven out. Boots clumped and thumped on the deck overhead, other voices bawled orders, and heavy chain rattled metallically in the darkness around him.

I guess I really can sleep just about anywhere, he thought. Must be Shakym. About time, even for this tub.

He knew very little about Shakym beyond the name; only that it was the major seaport of the Princedom of Tanshar and that it lay across the four-hundred-and-fifty-mile-wide mouth of the Gulf of Tanshar from Gairlahs in the Duchy of Fern, the most northwesterly of Dohlar’s provinces. If this was Shakym, they were officially in West Haven, little more than five hundred miles from the Temple Lands border and fourteen hundred miles from Lake Pei.

“Sir?” The voice was faint, barely audible, and his right hand gently stroked the matted hair of the head lying in his lap.

“It seems we’re here, Master Svairsmahn.” He kept his own voice as close to normal as he could, but it was hard when the boy’s bony hand reached up and gripped his wrist. “I imagine we’re going to have some light in a few minutes.”

“Can’t come too soon for me, Sir,” the midshipman said gamely. He grunted with effort, shoving himself up into a sitting position, and Manthyr heard a retching sound. It went on for several seconds before it stopped.

“Sorry about that, Sir,” Svairsmahn said.

“You’re not the only one who’s fouled himself down here, Master Svairsmahn,” Manthyr told him. “Not your fault, either. Chain a man where he can’t move and leave him there long enough, and it’s going to happen.”

“True enough, Sir Gwylym,” Captain Maikel Krugair’s voice came out of the dark. “And just think how much fun these bastards are going to have washing down all this shit-if you’ll pardon the expression, Sir-once we’re out of here.”

The man who’d captained HMS Avalanche sounded positively cheerful at the thought, and Manthyr heard other laughter from men he couldn’t see.

“There is that bit in the Writ about reaping what you sow, Cap’n,” someone else observed. “An’ shit fer shitheads is about right, t’ my way of thinking.”

There was more laughter, and then the first batten was thrown aside and bright morning sunlight streamed down into the cavernous, stinking hold.

“Hold your noise, you fucking scum!” someone shouted. “Keep shut, if you know what’s good for you!”

“Why?” a Charisian voice shot back derisively. “What’re you going to do? Tell the Grand Inquisitor on us?!”

Laughter hooted in the stinking hold, and Manthyr’s heart swelled with weeping pride in his men.

“Think it’s funny, do you?” the voice which had shouted snarled. “We’ll see how you like it in a month or so!”

Manthyr looked around him, squinting his eyes against the light as more battens were heaved aside. Naiklos Vahlain lay beside him, blinking groggily. Manthyr didn’t like the valet’s sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. Vahlain was ten years older than he was, and he’d started without the inherent toughness a life at sea had given Manthyr. No man in the world could have more courage and spirit, but Vahlain’s body was beginning to fail him.

Beyond Vahlain, as the light explored their fetid prison, he saw other scarecrows, many of them lying in pools of their own filth. Dysentery was stalking among them, taking its own toll, and his heart was grimly certain that at least some of those still lying motionless would never move again.

When he thought about it, it was almost a miracle so many of them were still alive. The six five-days since they’d left Gorath had been the most brutal and crushing of Manthyr’s life, and that was saying something for a Charisian seaman. But, then, whatever men might say, the sea was never truly cruel. She simply didn’t care. It took men to practice cruelty. Men who deliberately and knowingly gave themselves to cruelty’s service, and it didn’t matter whether they claimed to do it in the name of God or the name of Shan-wei herself. What mattered was the sickness and the hunger and the perversion eating away whatever it was inside them that might once have made them truly human.

Things had gotten a little better after Twyngyth. Manthyr didn’t really know why, although he’d come to the conclusion they probably owed at least some of it to Father Myrtan. The fair-haired young upper-priest seemed no less fervent in his faith than Vyktyr Tahrlsahn, and Manthyr doubted Father Myrtan would hesitate to put any heretic to the Question or to the Punishment. The difference between him and Tahrlsahn was that Tahrlsahn would enjoy it; Father Myrtan would simply do it because that was what his beliefs required of him. Manthyr couldn’t decide which of those was actually worse, when he came down to it, but at least Father Myrtan didn’t delight in the sort of small souled brutality which had killed almost a dozen of Manthyr’s men in the first five-day and a half of this nightmare journey.

Oh, stop trying to analyze things, Gwylym, he told himself. You know perfectly well what it really was. Even that asshole Tahrlsahn finally realized none of you were going to live the rest of the way to Zion if he kept it up. Pity he figured it out. It would’ve been so fitting for him to have to face Clyntahn and explain how he’d come to use up all of the Grand Asshole’s “heretics” before he got home with them! Hell, he’d probably have gotten to take our place!

He let himself dwell for a moment or two on the delightful image of Tahrlsahn facing his own Inquisition, then brushed it aside. Whether Tahrlsahn faced justice in this life or the next really didn’t matter. Face it he would, one way or the other, and for now, duty called, and duty-and fidelity-to his men were really all he had left.

“Wakey, wakey, Naiklos!” he called as cheerily as he could, shaking the valet gently. “They say our cruise is over. Back on the road again, I suppose.”

“Yes, Sir.” Vahlain shook himself, struggling gamely up into a sitting position and fastidiously straightening the remaining rags of his clothing. “I’ll see to making reservations at a decent hotel, Sir.”

“You do that,” Manthyr said affectionately, resting one hand on the older man’s slight shoulder. “Nothing but the best, mind you! Clean linen and warming pans for me and Master Svairsmahn. And be sure you pick the wine; can’t trust my judgment about that, you know.”

“Of course, Sir.” Vahlain managed a death’s-head smile, and Manthyr squeezed his shoulder before he turned back to Svairsmahn.

The midshipman smiled, too, but it looked even more ghastly on him. Vahlain was over sixty; Lainsair Svairsmahn was not yet thirteen, and thirteen-year-old boys-even thirteen-year-old boys who were king’s officers-weren’t supposed to be one-legged, hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed, half-starved, wracked by fever and nausea, and filled with the knowledge of what awaited all of them.

Three Temple Guardsmen clattered down the steep ladder from the upper deck. Manthyr was pretty sure they’d been chosen for their duty as punishment for some lapse in duty, and he heard them gagging on the stench despite the bandannas tied across their noses and mouths. Three days locked in the hold of an undersized coasting brig tended to produce quite an aroma, he thought grimly.