David Weber - Empire from the Ashes

"Well, it turned out fine, but she decided to tell Stomald the truth."

"My God! I turn my back for an instant, and all of you run amok!"

"Oh, no! Not us— you're the one who's been running around in the muck!" Sandy gurgled with laughter as he winced, then sobered—a little. "Besides, Harry had an excuse. She's in love."

"Think I hadn't figured that out weeks ago? How'd Tamman take it?"

"Quite well, actually," Sandy said wickedly. "I wouldn't say he's completely over it, but I did overhear a couple of the Malagoran girls sighing over how handsome 'Lord Tamman' is."

"Handsome? Tam? " Sean cocked his head, then chuckled. "Well, compared to me, I guess he is. You mean he's, um, encouraging their interest?"

"Let's just say he isn't dis couraging it." Sandy grinned.

"Well, in that case, I suppose you'd better catch me up on all the gossip before I join the others for supper."

"Why? I could brief you while you eat, Sean. None of them understand English."

"I know that," Sean said. He picked out a relatively dry spot, spread his Malagoran-style poncho over it, and waved her to a seat upon it. "The problem, dear, is that I can't eat very well while I'm laughing. Now give."

"All right, then. Everybody clear on his orders?"

Sean looked around the circle of faces in the late afternoon light. He and Tibold had spent weeks convincing their officers to ask questions whenever there was anything they didn't understand, but, one by one, each captain nodded soberly.

"Good!" He folded the map with deliberate briskness, then turned and gazed northeast to the screen of dragoons deployed across his line of advance. Beyond them, he could just see a village that was supposed to have been totally evacuated... and hadn't been.

Sandy's warning that there were still people about had come in time—he hoped. He'd sent flanking columns of dragoons forward, then had them curl back in from the east, and they seemed to have caught all the villagers before anyone got away to Malz.

It was the ninth day since he'd set out for Erastor. By his original estimate, he should already have been in striking distance of Ortak's rear; as it was, he was still south of the Mortan, the weather was going bad on him again, and the head of the Guard relief column should reach the Malz turn-off within four days. His time margin had become knife-thin, and if any of those peasants had fled with word of his presence, he was in a world of trouble.

Well, Sandy's stealthed spies would warn him if the bad guys did figure out he was coming. Which, unfortunately, wasn't going to help him a lot if they figured it out after he'd crossed the river and trapped himself between Ortak and High-Captain Terrahk's relief force.

He shook off his worry and nodded to his officers.

"Let's get this show on the road, then," he said, and they slapped their breastplates in salute and dashed off.

Considering the unexpected rigors of the swamp crossing, the men were in excellent shape, Sean thought. Tired, but far from exhausted, and their morale was better than he would have dared hope. They'd hated the swamps, but despite the delays, their confidence was unshaken. Which was good, because they had another ten kilometers to cover this day, and Malz was tied into the semaphore chain which connected Erastor to points east. Each semaphore station was a looming, gantry-like structure which let its crew see for kilometers in every direction and turned it into a watch tower. That meant the chain had to be cut in darkness, before any warning could be sent in either direction, and defined not only when Sean had to reach and secure Malz, but when he had to get his troops across the river to the Baricon-Erastor high road, as well.

He called for his own branahlk and trotted back towards his infantry. Part of him longed to go with the dragoons in person, but Sandy's stealthed cutter hovered above them. She'd tell him if anything went wrong, and he needed to be with his main body, ready to respond to any warning she might send.

He turned in the saddle to watch Captain Juahl lead the dragoons east. Juahl was a good man, he told himself, and he understood the plan. That was just going to have to be enough.

It was almost midnight, local time, when Sean's lead rifle regiments reached Malz. Bonfires encircled the town, and parties of dragoons picketed its unprepossessing walls. It wasn't a large town—no more than eight thousand even in normal times, and its population had declined drastically when the Holy Host came through en route to Yortown—but enough people remained inside those walls to stand off dragoons. Worse, there were plenty of potential messengers to warn Ortak what was happening, which was the reason for those pickets and bonfires.

A mounted messenger trotted up to him and saluted.

"Captain Juahl sent me to report, Lord Sean," the exhausted young officer said. "We haven't secured the Malz tower yet—they got the town gates shut and we didn't have the strength to force them—but Captain Juahl and Under-Captain Hahna secured the fords and both towers between here and the crossroads. Hahna's company is posted just east of the crossroads, and we got both towers intact. Captain Juahl said to tell you our men are ready to pass messages both ways, My Lord."

"Good!" Sean slapped the messenger's shoulder, and the young man grinned at him. "Are you up to riding back to Captain Juahl?"

"Yes, My Lord!"

"In that case go tell him I'm delighted with his news. Ask him to thank all of his officers and men for me, as well, and tell him I'll get infantry support up as fast as I can."

"Yes, My Lord!" The messenger saluted again and vanished into the darkness, and Sean turned to Tibold.

"Thank God for that!" he said softly, and the ex-Guardsman nodded. Most of the men who'd managed the Temple's semaphore chain across Malagor had fled the heresy, but enough had joined it to give Sean the personnel to man the towers he'd hoped to capture. Now he controlled High-Captain Ortak's mail... and the information flowing east to the oncoming relief column, as well.

"I want you to help handle the negotiations here," he went on after a moment, waving at the closed gates. "We haven't had any massacres yet, and I'd sooner not start now because someone makes a mistake." He tugged on his nose. "Let's send Folmak's brigade up to Juahl. He's level-headed enough to handle anything that comes at him unexpectedly. Make sure he's got a copy of our message notes, and tell him I'll join him in person as soon as possible."

"At once, Lord Sean." Tibold turned his branahlk and trotted off with a briskness Sean knew he didn't feel. Today's long march had been worse even than the swamp, and Tibold had spent part of it marching with each regiment. He insisted it was good for morale, and Sean believed him. It also meant "Lord Sean" had to stump along with the troops, too, but he was thirty-five years younger than Tibold and enhanced, to boot. He was undoubtedly the freshest man in the entire column, and all he wanted to do was sleep for a week.

Well, if Tibold could manage to look sharp and fresh, then so could Sean, and he'd damned well better do just that!

He grinned and dismounted, tossed his reins to one of his aides, and felt a spasm of pity for the townsfolk of Malz as he walked towards their closed gates. They had to know he could burn their town around their ears, and given the Inner Circle's propaganda, they probably expected him to do just that so their children would be nicely browned when he sat down to eat them! Convincing the poor bastards to open up was going to be a pain, but he needed to get it done before somebody did something stupid. Between them, Stomald and "the angels"—with a little help from the bloodthirsty field regulations of a certain Captain-General Lord Sean—had created a remarkably well-behaved army. The fact that it regarded itself as an elite force and confidently expected to kick the butt of a much larger army in a few days also helped by giving it a certain image to live up to, but Sean knew most of its restraint stemmed from the Holy Host's failure to reach Malagor. The Malagoran Temple Guard had done its share of village-burning on its abortive march to Cragsend, but half the men who'd done that were now members in good standing of the Angels' Army, and they'd done their very best to make amends. Yortown and the seizure of the Thirgan Gap had precluded the other atrocities religious wars routinely spawned, and the men felt little need for vengeance. Sean intended to keep it that way, but a handful of panicky townsmen who took it into their heads to "resist heresy" or simply thought they were defending their families could easily provoke a fire fight that might well expand into a full-blown massacre.