Midst Toil And Tribulation – Snippet 22
Trahskhat nodded, and glanced up the valley himself. His eyes were harder than Raimahn’s, and his expression was as bleak as the mountains around them.
“Can’t say that disappoints me, Sir,” he said, those stony eyes dropping to the ruins of Brahdwyn’s Folly. “Can’t say that disappoints me at all.”
Raimahn nodded, although he wasn’t really certain he shared the older man’s feelings about that. Or that he wanted to share them, at any rate.
He’d seen more than enough of Zhan Fyrmahn’s handiwork to know the man would have to be high on anyone’s list of people the world would be better off without. He wouldn’t be quite at the top — that spot was reserved for Zhaspahr Clyntahn — but he couldn’t have been more than a half-dozen names down. It had been Fyrmahn’s band, along with that of his cousin, Mharak Lohgyn, who’d burned Brahdwyn’s Folly and butchered its inhabitants. Ostensibly, because they’d all been Reformists, hateful in the eyes of God, and there’d actually been three or four families in town of whom that was probably true. But Zhan Fyrmahn had had reasons of his own, even before the Grand Inquisitor’s agents had stoked the Republic’s maelstrom, and there was a reason he’d taken such special care to exterminate Wahlys Mahkhom’s family.
Mountaineers tended to be as hard and self-reliant as the rocky slopes that bred them. From everything Raimahn had seen so far, Glacierheart’s coal miners took that tendency to extremes, but the trappers and hunters like Mahkhom and Fyrmahn were harder still. They had to be, given their solitary pursuits, the long hours they spent alone in the wilderness, with no one to look out for them or go for help if something went wrong. They asked nothing of anyone, they paid their own debts, and they met whatever came their way on their own two feet, unflinchingly. Raimahn had to respect that, yet that hardness had its darker side, as well, for it left them disinclined towards forgiving their enemies, whatever the Archangel Bédard or the Writ might say on the subject. Too many of them were feudists at heart, ready to pursue a quarrel to the bitter most end, however many generations it took and despite anything Mother Church might say about the virtues of compassion and forgiveness.
Raimahn had no idea what had actually started the bad blood between the Mahkhom and Fyrmahn clans. On balance, he was inclined to believe the survivors of Brahdwyn’s Folly, that the first casualty had been Wahlys’ grandfather and that the “accident” which had befallen him had been no accident at all. He was willing to admit he was prejudiced in Mahkom’s favor, however, and no doubt the Fyrmahns remembered it very differently. And whatever had started the savage hatred, there’d been enough incidents up and down the Green Cove Trace since to provide either side with plenty of pretexts for seeking “justice” in the other family’s blood.
That was Zhan Fyrmahn’s view, at any rate, and he’d seized on the exhortations of the inquisitors who’d organized the Sword of Schueler as a chance — a license — to settle the quarrel once and for all. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else; there was always something haters could appeal to, something bigots could use. But when the hate and bigotry came from men who wore the vestments of the Inquisition, they carried the imprimatur of Mother Church herself. It wasn’t simply “all right” for someone like Fyrmahn to give himself up to the service of hate and anger, it was his duty, the thing God expected him to do. And if two or three hundred people in a remote village died along the way, why, that was God’s will, too, and it served the bastards right.
Especially if their last name happened to be Mahkhom.
I wonder how many times Fyrmahn’s reflected on the consequences of his own actions?
Raimahn had wondered that more than once, and not about Fyrmahn alone. Does he realize he turned every survivor of Brahdwyn’s Folly into a dyed-in-the-wool Reformist, whatever they were before? If he does, does he care? And does he even realize he and the men like him are the ones who started all of this? Or does he blame Wahlys for all of it?
He probably did blame Mahkhom, and his only regret was probably the fact that Wahlys hadn’t been home when he and his raiders massacred Brahdwyn’s Folly. It would have worked out so much better from Fyrmahn’s perspective, especially since it would have prevented Mahkhom from becoming the center of the Reformist resistance in this ice-girt chunk of frozen hell. Raimahn had no idea if Mahkhom had truly embraced the Reformist cause, or if, like Fyrmahn himself, it was simply what empowered and sanctified his own savagery and violence. He hoped it was more than simple hatred, because under that icy shell of hate and loss, he sensed a good and decent man, one who deserved better than to give his own soul to Shan-wei because of the atrocities he was willing to wreak under the pretext of doing God’s will. But whatever the depth of his belief, whatever truly drove Wahlys Mahkhom, by this time every Temple Loyalist within fifty miles must curse his name each night before lying down to sleep.
Archbishop Zhasyn’s right; we
do lay up our own harvests the instant we put the seed into the ground. And I can’t blame Wahlys for the way he feels, even if I do see the hatred setting deeper and deeper into these mountains’ bones with every raid, every body. It doesn’t matter any more who shed the first blood, burned the first barn, and how in God’s name is even someone like Archbishop Zhasyn going to heal those wounds? For that matter, who’s going to be left alive to be healed?
Byrk Raimahn had no answers to those questions, and he wished he did, because deep inside, he knew he was more like Wahlys Mahkhom — and possibly even Zhan Fyrmahn — then he wanted to admit. That was why he was out here in this ice and snow, sipping this watery tea, waiting — hoping — for the men he wanted to kill to come to him. Men he could kill without qualm or hesitation because they deserved to die. Because in avenging what had happened to Brahdwyn’s Folly he could also avenge the arson and the rape and the torture and the murder he’d seen at Sailys Trahskhat’s side in Siddar City’s Charisian Quarter the day the Temple Loyalists drove the “Sword of Schueler” into the Republic’s back. Perhaps he couldn’t track down those Temple Loyalists, but he could track down their brothers in blood here in Glacierheart.
In the still, small hours of the night, when he faced his own soul with bleak honesty, he knew what he most feared in all the world: that if he’d stayed in Siddar City, he would have become the very thing he hated, a man so obsessed with the need for vengeance that he would have attacked any Temple Loyalist he encountered with his bare hands. Not because of anything that Temple Loyalist might actually have done, but simply because he was a Temple Loyalist. But here — here in the Gray Walls — the lines were clear, drawn in blood and the corpses of burned villages by men who branded themselves clearly by their own acts. Here he could identify his enemies by what they did, not simply by what they believed, and tell himself his own actions, the things he did, were more than mere vengeance, that what drove him was more than just an excuse to slake his own searing need for retribution. That he was preventing still more Brahdwyn’s Follies, stopping at least some of the rape and murder. He could loose his inner demons without fearing they would consume the innocent along with the guilty and perhaps — just perhaps — without the man his grandparents had raised destroying himself along with them.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Well?” Zhan Fyrmahn growled.
“Looks right, at least,” Samyl Ghadwyn replied. The burly, thick-shouldered mountaineer shrugged. “Plenty of footprints. Counted the marks from at least a half-dozen sets of sleds, too, and nobody took a shot at me. This time, anyway.”
He shrugged again, and Fyrmahn scowled, rubbing his frost-burned cheeks while he stared along the Trace. The trail snaked along its western side, climbing steadily for the next mile or so, and the small Silver Rock River was a solid, gray-green line of merciless ice four hundred feet below his present perch. The river’s ice was no harder than his eyes, though, and no more merciless, as he considered the other man’s report.
Every member of his band was related to him, one way or another — that was the way it was with mountain clans — but Ghadwyn was only a fourth cousin, and there were times Fyrmahn suspected his heart wasn’t fully in God’s work. He didn’t have the fire, the zeal, Mother Church’s sons were supposed to have, and Fyrmahn didn’t care for his habitual, take-it-or-leave-it attitude.
So the Hatfields and the McCoys are alive and well in Siddarmark. Well, mostly dead, but the sentiment is the same. Did I say “mostly dead?” Bleek!
Clyntahn has lit a bonfire that seems unlikely to be put out until one side kills off the other. Even proving the CoGA is a horrific lie won’t stop the blood feuds that the SoS either started or further inflamed.
Each group thinks God is on their side. The TLs have literally been commanded by the inquisition to destroy the reformists, while the reformists look at the corruption among the vicars, now spreading to the local TLs by the Inquisition and have no option but self-defense – and “preemptive self-defense” whenever possible.
Somehow I have to think that the righteous indignation of the reformists – many who weren’t reformists at all until they had to fight for their own and their family’s lives, will burn hotter in a lot more hearts than the religious zeal of the TL fanatics. Plus there’s probably a lot more on the reformist side. Keep in mind that EVERYONE who was attacked in the SoS is now a reformist, even those who were neutral, like Byrk, or staunch TLs, like Trescott. (Sorry, not gonna try to use the Safehold spelling for THAT name.)
A whole lot of TLs are just trying to keep their heads down so the Inquisition doesn’t have them killed, but they aren’t fanatics either. It will be interesting to see which way they jump when the EoC offers them a choice, while the Inquisition will demand they and their families be put to the question if they don’t “kill the heretics.”
The war may be one of logistics, but Siddarmark can only be truly won by winning hearts and minds. Filling empty stomachs is a good first step.
The Hatfield/McCoy feed was settled in a courtroom and then a gallows. This is more Montigues and Capulets.
J
From what those who were there told me this is more like the Balkans between the Serbs and Croats; or possibly the Scottish Highlands between clans (Glencoe). Hatfield/McCoy was bitter but small scale, and the Montigues/Capulets was more urban.
More locally speaking, it looks as if their trap is set and Fyrmahn’s force is walking into it. But I wouldn’t assume that he won’t escape, even if his force is seriously chewed up. And he does seem to have adopted a CoGA fanatic mantle.
I am curious as to whether he knows how large a force opposes him, and that they have rifles. I can’t exactly tell from the writing whether they have had a direct confrontation before. If not, then 200 men with rifles should come as a nasty shock. The comment “and nobody took a shot at me, at least this time” may refer to gunpowder weapons rather than crossbows, so I don’t know.
Thinking about it, the “Reformists” didn’t challenge Church doctrine, nor did they support a schism. How (if they even tried) did the Church justify attacking the reformists in the first place?
@2 @3 To quote the late, great American philosopher Steve Martin – by which I mean he hasn’t been great lately, not that he’s dead: “Well EXCUUUUUUUSE ME!” ;)
The folklore of the Hatfields/McCoy feud is stuff of American legend and Hollywood, and I was introduced to it of course by the Looney Toons version, with Bugs Bunny as the protagonist. Should he be “Whylee Wyvern” for the Safehold version? Bleek!
Based on the frontier nature of this feud, and the generations it’s lasted, before the SoS turned it into an ugly genocide more like the Serb and Croats, the Hatfields vs. McCoy version (especially since the MWW lives relatively close to the West Virgiania/Kentucky border where the Hatfields & McCoys lived) is probably what he’s using as a template, but with fewer courtrooms and a lot more killin’.
Speaking of people who need killin’, this Zhan Fyrmahn fellow acts like a fanatical inquisitor without the priest cap – he’s basically Clyntahn without the intelligence to occasionally curb his excesses.
Langhorne help us if there are a lot like him roaming Siddarmark, looking to kill anyone who isn’t as fanatically TL as he is himself. (Most likely because being a TL allows him to excuse the murders he’s always wanted to commit under the guise of being ordered by mother church.) But note how he distrusts his cousin Ghadwyn, who is a TL, but doesn’t “have the fire, the zeal, Mother Church’s sons were supposed to have, and Fyrmahn didn’t care for his habitual, take-it-or-leave-it attitude.” Oh dear… On the bright side, it sounds like Wahlys Mahkhom is a decent guy who will serve as a valuable catalyst for the reformers.
Fyrmahn is one sick sociopathic SOB. Which is pretty much sums up Clyntahn as well, and Fyrmahn has developed a God complex too. (Whoever he wants to kill, God wants dead.) Which is why he’s on the short list of people who need killin’, like the rabid dog he is.
Let’s hope he buys the farm soon – like in the next snippet!
IMO the SoS justification is so:
Anyone not FULLY (in the eyes of the most Holy Inquisition) supporting CoGA and their most-righteous Inquisitional priests in the eradication of Heretics (defined as anyone not accepting the pre-eminence of Clyntahn and his ilk or in ANY way associated favorably with the EoC, the CoC, or remaining loyal to that TRAITOR Stohnar) and Heresy (ANYTHING Clyntahn or the Inquisition says it is; especially anything contradicting or prosecuting Inquisitional or CoGA priests (the most Holy paladins of God)) is “an Enemy of God” and should be sent to join their mistress Shan Wei in Hell being prosecuted to the FULL extent of the Book of Schueler if at all possible. And collateral damage doesn’t matter as true sons and daughters of the church will go to reside below Langhorne and the ArcAngels in Heaven, while God will send the others to their deserved Hell with Shan Wei. “And you have to break a few eggs if you want omelets.”
In short: if Clyntahn or a CoGA priest (or even someone wanting an excuse) doesn’t like you; you are most likely toast if they can in ANY way cobble together some minimal Clyntahn-supporting excuses.
The SoS message Clyntahn has promulgated has unlocked everybody’s caged demons and given them free ?rein/reign? with God’s imprimatur that ANY excess they commit is God’s Will!!!!
It IMO makes the witch-hunts/witch-trials and the Inquisition persecution against non-Roman Catholics of our history look like children’s games.
And it also challenges the guerilla/terrorist/fanatic forces/individuals to do their utmost demonic worst against the challengers to CoGA as the punishments within the Book of Schueler are but a minimum to be inflicted during declared Jihad. ANY outrage if against a suspected heretic is blessed by God!!
/Rob
The snippet can also be read, it appears to me, as implying that Fyhrmahn has detected the trap being emplaced and is about to do something unpleasant to it. It depends whose tracks were identified.
I went back to check. Mahkhom was the gent we saw ambushing the supply caravan in Snip 1. I thought he might be but had to recheck.
@7: The previous snipped mentions “The information we fed Fyrmahn”. They know he is coming, so they try and make it as believable as possible, by faking supply sled tracks; supplies seem to be the focus of this particular front. What better bait to dangle than a juicy convoy, in the area you have to come through anyway? And you don’t take a shot because you want the scout to report back.
I am inclined to believe the tracks are part of the trap, though it is possible you are right.
@8 How do you suppose Merlin picked Mahkhom to watch among all the resistance fighters in Siddarmark? OWL obviously tagged him as a crucial leader who the ICA was going to want to work with in the future. A lot goes on off camera, but if we see a new character, unless he dies almost immediately, as in the red shirts during battles, that character is going to play an important part in the future.
Did anyone think the MWW would waste a chapter with such lurid detail led by such a memorable character? Bleek!
@9 I agree in every respect, except shooting at the scout might have made the setup a bit more believable, but it was important he report back. The reformist forces have set up a juicy target, and they clearly have someone on the inside who leaked the info about the caravan to Fyrmahn.
Let’s hope Fyrmahn doesn’t smell a lizard rat. That man needs killin’! Bleek!
@11: The key to a good ambush is keeping things “real”. If you spot and shoot the scouts EVERY time, then the opponent starts thinking about alternatives. You have to tempt them into thinking that they may just be evading your sentries sometimes, and thus have a real chance of success. There is no point in an ambush unless you get the other guy to stick his head into the noose.
When you take the weather into account, it appears that vengeance really is a dish best served cold.
@13 Alice Collins: Ouch!!!! (G)
/Rob
@13 Touché
haven’t heard anything recently in these blogs about the analogy with the 30 years war
strip out the competing dynasties to leave just the religious aspect and you can see comparable atrocities
@16 justdave: you saw the same kind of thing in both the the ACW and ARW from both sides and in innumerable places before and since.
Regrettedbly I think it is part of the human condition to let our demons run wild when we are given a “valid-to-ourselves” external excuse. Sociopaths/psychopaths IMO just need less excuses.
I think everybody has that dark place to a greater or lesser degree; the trick I think is never finding out how to go there. Or most especially (pardon my cursing!!) how to get the fuck back out!!!!!!
I apologize if my language has offended anyone on the forum, but I feel very strongly about this!!
/Rob
This will be going way beyond simple blood feuds. We are talking scorched earth/winner takes what’s left no prisoners taken no quarter sought. If war is hell we are building a condo in Dante’s seventh ring. On to a lighter subject when do we get to read about gorath being burned to the ground, all the people and animals slaughtered, no stone left one atop the other, and the ground plowed with salt so nothing will grow? Good old fashioned Pax Romana…. create a void and call it peace.
@9 Naturally no one would ever suggest that a writer like Weber would do something that might confuse any of his readers.
@18 SPOILER! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED! BLEEK!
The ICN will largely be finished with anything but escort duty by early spring, so with the addition of some ICM wielding breech loading rifles and the latest ships being turned out by the EoC, a fleet OUGHT to be sent to stomp Gorath flat and eliminate all ports and shipping around the Gulf of Dohlar. Picking up some ICA troops at Chisholm on the way would big a BIG help.
The fleet should be able to arrive at Gorath in late July or August, although there’s no hurry as the Gulf of Dohlar will be a “target rich environment.” This would greatly complicate the supply chain of every country set to pour troops into Siddarmark, and severely limit what Desnair and South Harchong can transport to the war zone.
The canal structure leading north into Siddarmark from Dohlar and the sea can be shut down by holding one single chokepoint, just NW of the port city of Dairynth on the Gulf of Bess. Burning that port will severely hamper unloading supplies, seizing it (and holding the nearby canal-river junction) will prevent EVERYONE from shipping supplies into Siddarmark using Siddarmarkan canals/rivers.
The first wave of enemy troops will have passed by and be ravaging Siddarmark by the time the ICN arrives, but those troops would soon find themselves starving when their supply chain dries up. Thanks to Clyntahn’s “starve the heretics” policy, invading armies can’t live off the land, so running out of supplies is a slow death sentence.
The big question is whether we’ll see this in MTaT, or will it have to wait until the next book? Gorath WILL burn, and King Raynahld will either burn with it, or will have been executed along with every inquisitor the ICM can catch before the city is set on fire. Civilians will be allowed to leave of course – there’s nothing like dumping a few hundred thousand refugees into the middle of a country with its army far away at the long end of a soon-to-be-cut supply chain to create total chaos – which will give the Dohlarans a small taste of what Siddarmark is going through.
The same policy can be followed in the north using one chokepoint at Traymos, The AoG can be starved out there using the same tactics, and since there are fewer of them, it will actually be an easier chokepoint to hold – but more difficult to resupply, as supplies need to come upriver from Icewind before the rivers freeze.
Glacierheart is the open highway leading into the heart of Siddarmark, though once the north and south canal routes are cut, it’s a death trap. If the defenders and any reinforcements can hold on until winter, the weather and starvation will do most of their work for them.
I’d normally bleek here, but since hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians are about to die, I’ll forgo the laughter and say things just look bleak. The good guys SHOULD win, but things won’t be as easy as I’ve just portrayed them, and the southern force at Dairynth is going to find themselves facing Dohlar, Harchong, some of the Border States, and the retreating, starving armies of all of them. They’d better take a LOT of reloads for their fancy new breech-loaders, because unless they can seize the Dairynth-Alykberg-Thesmar canal system and be able to use it, resupply is over 20,000 miles away.
@ 20 – So the consensus analysis appears to be, things are about to get ugly-er. A lot.
# 20 Nicely put. Of course, the problem is to identify the choke points- which we assume Cayleb can do, BUT if he can, the Church can do that too. If I’m the Church, I’d sure not want those choke points in enemy hands– I’d put lots of troops there.
What was the Holly Springs story? During the early part of the Vicksburg campaign, Grant and Sherman tried a dual advance, Van Dorn burned Holly Springs- Grant’s supply base, and as soon as Grant found out, he put everyone on half rations and quickly marched back to Memphis. Leaving Sherman unknowing- there was no way to get word to him to back off–to attack Chickasaw Bluffs, just north of Vicksburg. With no threat elsewhere, the Confederates concentrated. Sherman got hammered.
The reduced rations, immediate retreat, is important here. Grant was a quarter master type, so he knew that even in northern Mississippi, in the fall, after crops were in, that he was in trouble. How much greater danger for the Army of “God”- boggles the mind as to the worries running thru the minds of their competent commanders.
And in Glacierhart sort of terrain, it would appear that Cayleb’s folks would have an even bigger communication advantage than usual.
@20
The British in Afganistan (c1837), Germans in Stalingrad (c1942) and Napoleon’s campaign to Moscow spring to mind as well. Cold and Lethal.
The politics are positively tribally Islamic (thank bin Ladens pals for that) with gross intolerance of any dissent or non-conformance leading to the clerical justification of mass murder (my way or the graveyard philosophy). (The Christians in Europe went through this in the 1500’s to 1700’s as well, it’s still going on in Africa and parts of India as well). Politics and religion are a recipe for a horible mess.
@20. Just curious–how does your rampant speculation have anything to do with being a spoiler?
Jeff, that’s my question as well.
I’m the only person here (to my knowledge) who knows what’s going to happen in this book. [Wink]
@24 @25 As for #20 being a spoiler, I referred heavily to the lovely new map available at
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Safehold/338/1
in that post. So if someone here didn’t want to find out about detailed locations that haven’t been brought up in the snippets yet, I wanted them to have the chance to ignore my post. Sorry if I got your hopes up for nothing! ;)
I’m probably being excessively cautious, but after we got chewed out in the Weber Forums for discussing the results of current snippets in threads that weren’t labeled with a “Spoiler” tag, I’ve gotten in the habit of putting a spoiler warning on messages where I make conjectures that aren’t based on general knowledge.
Then again, this IS a “Current Snippets” thread, so anyone who comes here and reads the comments probably doesn’t care about spoilers that much.
SPOILER!!!!! I REALLY, REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME!!!!
BUT – Drak would yell at me were I to mention the “weapons which must not be named!” for example. So would the MWW. So would almost everyone else I’d guess. (Heck, I’D yell at me!)
END SPOILER
So better safe than sorry… Bleek!