David Weber - How firm a foundation

“Think what you’re doing, Sergeant!” the priest snapped. “By God, I’ll see you put to the Punishment for collaborating with heretics! I’ll-”

The Delferahkan flinched, but then his shoulders hunched stubbornly and he glared down at the priest.

“He’s an inquisitor, Sir,” he said firmly. “Sure as sure.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Aplyn-Ahrmahk nodded to the Delferahkan, then looked at the petty officer. “Stand him up, Mahlyk,” he said flatly.

“Waste of good sweat, Sir,” the petty officer said. “He’ll only be back down in a minute or two.”

“Even an inquisitor should have the chance to die on his feet, Stywyrt,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk replied in a voice of iron.

“What?” The priest stared up at him in shock. “What did you just say?”

“You and your friend Clyntahn should pay more attention to proclamations coming out of Tellesberg,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk said coldly. “Some of those men you tortured and butchered in Zion were friends of mine, and every damned one of them was innocent. Well, the blood on your cassock says you’re not, and my Emperor and Empress’ policy where inquisitors are concerned is very clear.”

“You can’t be-I mean, I’m a priest! A priest of Mother Church! You can’t just-”

“I know priests,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk told him as Stywyrt Mahlyk hauled him to his feet by the collar of his cassock. “I even know a Schuelerite priest-a good one, the kind who truly serves God. And that’s how I know you aren’t one, whatever that fat, greedy bastard in Zion might say.” He drew a pistol from his belt and cocked it. “If you want to make your peace with God, you have thirty seconds.”

“ Damn you! Who do you think you are to threaten a consecrated priest of God! You wouldn’t dare -!”

“You don’t want to make peace?” Aplyn-Ahrmahk said. “Fine.”

His hand rose, his finger squeezed, and Dahnyvyn Schahl’s eyes were just starting to widen in disbelieving terror when his head disintegrated. The body dropped like a sring-cut puppet, and Aplyn-Ahrmahk turned to Earl Coris and Princess Irys.

“I apologize for the delay,” he said as the muzzle smoke of his pistol wisped away on the cool, damp breath of the fall. “Now, I believe those boats are still waiting for us.”

Nimue’s Cave, The Mountains of Light, The Temple Lands, and Tellesberg Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis

“So just exactly how was it you were planning to get home again without raising any eyebrows?” Cayleb Ahrmahk asked, leaning back in the rattan lounge and gazing up at a spectacular sunset.

His daughter lay curled on his chest, her nose pressed into the angle of his neck while she slept with the absolute limpness possible only for small children and cat-lizards, and Empress Sharleyan’s crochet hook moved busily as she looked across at him and smiled.

“Why should I get home without raising any eyebrows?” Merlin responded over the com plug in his ear. “I’m a seijin- the mysterious, deadly, probably magical Seijin Merlin!” There was a clearly audible sniff. “I come and go, and no man sees me pass.”

“You’re getting remarkably full of yourself, aren’t you?” Sharleyan inquired sweetly.

“Well, I think I’ve done fairly well the last few five-days,” he pointed out.

“That’s true, I suppose,” Cayleb said judiciously. “I especially liked the bit with the voices shouting to each other there at the end, on top of the gunshots. No wonder they thought all of you were right in front of them!”

“If you’ve got a programmable vocoder for a voice box, you might as well use it,” Merlin replied smugly, but then he sighed. “Actually, though, I think I’m blowing my ego out of my ears because I’m bored and I want to come home.”

Sharleyan looked across at Cayleb, and her expression softened.

“We’re looking forward to seeing you at home,” Cayleb assured him, speaking for them both. Then he shrugged-very gently, so as not to disturb the sleeping child next to his heart. “I agree sending you personally to oversee Irys and Daivyn’s rescue was the right move, but having you operate openly that far away’s inconvenient as hell in a lot of ways.”

“I’ve noticed that myself,” Merlin said dryly. “I’m thinking about adding a few extra members to Master Zhevons’ ensemble cast. It can be a pain covering for absences on my part while Zhevons-or someone else, for that matter-runs around in the middle of Howard, but it saves us from having to account for all of this damned ‘transit time’!”

“I see your point, but I think it was a good thing you were ‘running around in the middle of Howard’ this time,” Sharleyan said soberly, and Merlin shrugged.

“I’m inclined to agree, given my own modest contribution to getting them out of Talkyra and delivering them to the rendezvous, but Hektor did pretty well himself, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Cayleb agreed. “Yes he did. Especially for someone as young as he is.”

“This from the gray-bearded septuagenarian sitting on the throne of Charis, I see,” Merlin replied, and Sharleyan giggled.

“All right, so I was only a couple of years older than he is now when you took me in hand,” Cayleb acknowledged. “But he still did a damned good job.”

“No question about that,” Merlin acknowledged, and there wasn’t.

Faced with the loss of all of the expedition’s senior officers, Aplyn-Ahrmahk had decided to continue the mission, despite the risk of additional encounters with the Delferahkan militia. So he’d transferred all his wounded into four of the six boats and sent them back downstream with orders to remain in the middle of the current as much as possible. The Sarm wasn’t an enormous river, but it was broad enough that troops armed with the relatively short-barreled, smoothbore matchlocks dragoons carried would play hell trying to hit a target in midstream. Artillery would have been a different matter, but the Royal Delferahkan Army had no new model field artillery. For that matter, it didn’t have very much artillery at all, and the cumbersome, slow-firing pieces it did possess lacked the mobility to intercept boats moving at the better part of twelve miles an hour under sail and oars while the river’s current worked for them instead of against them.

He’d also ordered the boats to travel in daylight to make it abundantly clear to any observer that they were straggling back to Sarmouth in disorder as quickly as they could get there. As he’d hoped, the Delferahkans had pursued the retreating boats with their cargo of wounded and clearly dispirited passengers as vigorously as they could all the way back downriver. Meanwhile, he and the remaining two boats had continued upstream unnoticed, moving only under cover of darkness, and with Stywyrt Mahlyk’s cutter towing the second boat all but empty. Proceeding with barely thirty men was an obvious risk, but it had let him save room in the second boat for the passengers he’d intended to collect.

It had also left him far shorter-handed than he could have wished when he encountered the unfortunate Lieutenant Wyllyms’ dragoons. Luckily, he’d arrived at the rendezvous fifteen hours before Colonel Tahlyvyr’s regiment moved into the area and he’d posted pickets well out from his carefully hidden boats. They’d spotted Wyllyms’ troopers moving into position early enough for Aplyn-Ahrmahk to arrange his own counter-ambush. Even so, he’d had to wait for the dragoons-who’d still substantially outnumbered his own people-to emerge from the woods and bunch up before he could pounce. In the end, he’d ordered the attack with impeccable timing, and, frankly, the cold-blooded patience with which he’d waited for exactly the right moment was even more surprising out of someone his age than the initiative, in Merlin’s opinion.