David Weber - How firm a foundation

“And I haven’t forgotten you, Brother!” the seijin called, and Bahldwyn Gaimlyn squealed in sudden terror before the pistol in Merlin’s left hand ended his squeal forever. .

Royal Palace, City of Talkyra, and Sarman Mountains, Kingdom of Delferahk

Merlin stood on the front steps, shrouded in a cloud of powder smoke, slowly fraying on the breeze. He surveyed the body-littered courtyard with ice-cold blue eyes and holstered his left-hand pistol, then heard a sound behind him.

Human ears battered by that much gunfire would have been unable to hear it, but Merlin Athrawes’ ears weren’t human. He turned towards the soft noise and found himself facing Tobys Raimair. The ex-sergeant’s sword was drawn, his face tight, and his eyes were hard.

“I’m thinking all those tales about you being a demon or a wizard aren’t so far-fetched after all!” the sergeant grated.

“I can see where that might occur to you,” Merlin replied calmly. “On the other hand, there’s nothing at all demonic or magic about my pistols, Tobys.”

“Oh, aye, I can see that!” Raimair said caustically. “Why, just anyone could shoot for an hour or two out of one wee little gun like that!”

“No, not for an hour,” Merlin corrected in that same calm voice. “Just six shots, Tobys. Only six.”

“Six?!” Raimair glared at him. “Why not ten? Langhorne, why not thirty?! ”

“Because they wouldn’t fit into the cylinder,” Merlin told him, and Raimair looked down as he heard a metallic clicking sound. His sword never wavered, but his eyes widened as he realized the seijin ’s pistols weren’t like any other firearm he’d ever heard of. For one thing, they seemed to be made entirely out of steel, except for the wooden handgrips. For another, some sort of heavy cylinder had just come out of the center of the thing to rest in the palm of the seijin ’s left hand. It left a queer, squared-off gap or opening in the middle of the rest of the weapon, and Merlin held it up where he could see it.

“It’s actually a simple concept,” he said. “A friend of mine-I call him Owl-made it for me. He calls it a ‘revolver,’ because the central cylinder here”-he waved his left hand gently-“ revolves when you cock the hammer. If you look, you’ll see it has six holes drilled in it. Each of those is big enough to hold one charge of powder and one bullet. The bullets are a bit smaller than the ones most of the Guard’s pistols fire, but to make up for it, the charge is about a fourth again as large, so they hit a lot harder. And it doesn’t need a priming pan because a very clever Charisian officer-another friend of mine, named Mahndrayn-invented something called a ‘percussion cap’ that flashes over when you hit it with a hammer. If you look here,” he reversed the cylinder, showing Raimair the back end, which was solid but had six raised, odd-looking bumps of some sort, “you’ll see where the caps fit over the nipples here so the hammer can strike them as they rotate and each shot lines up with the barrel.” He shrugged. “It’s just a way to carry more firepower, Tobys, and I promise you it violates none of God’s laws. When we get to Tellesberg, you can discuss it directly with Father Paityr, our Intendant, if you like.”

Raimair held out his free hand, and Merlin smiled slightly as he dropped the cylinder into it. The sergeant turned it, held it up to one of the door lanterns in order to see it better, then raised it to his nose and sniffed the scent of burnt gunpowder. He lowered it again, looking down at it for several seconds, then drew a deep breath, lowered his sword, and handed it back over.

“I’m sure you know your own business best, Seijin,” he said, “but you might want to warn people before you do things like that. Could save yourself a peck of trouble… not to mention a sword in the ribs, now I think about it.”

“Tobys, you’re a good man,” Merlin told him, “and if you can get a sword into my ribs, I’ll figure I must have deserved it.”

Raimair looked at him suspiciously, obviously trying to figure out if he’d just been complimented or insulted, and Merlin smiled. Then he looked past the sergeant as Earl Coris appeared behind Raimair.

“That was certainly impressive,” the earl said just a little tartly. “Was it really necessary, though, Seijin Merlin? Once they stop running, they’ll spread the tale of your ‘demon weapons’ all over the Kingdom! If they might’ve had any trouble getting together the manpower to chase us before, they certainly won’t now-especially with two Inquisitors dead, to boot!”

“Finding the manpower was never going to be a problem, My Lord,” Merlin replied calmly, reaching into his belt pouch and extracting a cylinder identical to the one in Raimair’s hand, except that this one was still loaded and capped. He slipped it into the revolver frame and slid the central locking pin back into place to hold it. Then he holstered the reloaded weapon, drew its twin from the other holster, and replaced its cylinder, as well.

“The Inquisition can-and will-rouse the entire countryside,” he continued as he worked. “Whether or not I had any ‘demon weapons’ won’t matter a solitary damn as far as that’s concerned! But if you’ll notice, the entire Royal Guard has temporarily decamped. I figure they’ll be back shortly-whatever else they may be, they aren’t cowards, and as soon as they get over the shock, they’ll come back. They’ll be cautious, but they’ll come. In the meantime, however, we can get a bit of a head start. And it’s occurred to me that the best horses in the entire Grand Duchy of Talkyra are right here in King Zhames’ stables. I realize you have some nice ones waiting for you at that livery stable outside town, but I doubt they’re the equal of the ones in the royal stables. Not only that, but depriving our pursuers of horses that good strikes me as an excellent idea, as well. And while I’m thinking about things that might discourage or hamper pursuit, I think I’ll just take the opportunity while you and Tobys here go acquire our transportation to leave a few little… incendiary calling cards here and there around the castle. Places like, oh, the magazine, for example.”

He smiled beatifically and looked at Raimair.

“Do try to get them moving, Tobys,” he said. “Those Guardsmen may come back sooner than I thought, and I’d just as soon be on our way.”

He swept the stunned-looking earl a bow and headed down the stairs.

Irys Daykyn managed not to groan as she swung down out of the saddle. The sun was working its way towards evening overhead, although that was difficult to tell at the moment. The mature growth forest they were passing through had been only thinly invaded by imported terrestrial species, and even the towering Safeholdian pines seemed small and dwarfed under the shadows of the titan oaks. Most of those titan oaks had probably been growing here since the Day of Creation itself, she thought. Some of them were as much as fifteen feet in diameter at the base, and each individual tree would probably have produced enough wood to build an entire war galleon. Even this early in the spring, they wove a solid, green canopy overhead, and the dense shade of their branches had almost completely choked out any underbrush. It was already dim, bordering on outright dark, under that twiggy roof, but at least the absence of undergrowth had allowed the fugitives to make excellent speed.

They’d maintained an alternating trot and walk for the last twenty-two hours, pausing only to rest the horses occasionally… or to swap their saddles to fresh mounts. Merlin had been right about that, she reflected. Not only had King Zhames’ stables had the best horses available, but there’d been enough of them to provide each member of their party with no less than three mounts apiece. Not all were equally good, but even the worst was well above average, and the spare mounts had allowed Merlin to set a pace they could never have maintained with only a single horse each.