Heirs of Empire

“Father, Captain Tibold and I will be unable to release the troops for services this evening with the enemy so near at hand, but if you’d care to send the chaplains forward—?”

“Thank you,” Stomald said. Lord Sean was always careful about such things, yet the priest wondered why neither he nor Lord Tamman nor even the angels attended the services. Of course, such as they had their own links to God, but it was almost as if they stood aside intentionally.

“In that case, I think I’ll go find lunch. Will you join me?”

Stomald nodded, and noted the amusement in the Angel Harry’s eye. She smiled on the captain, and a surprising thought flickered in Stomald’s mind. Lord Sean was as homely as the Angel Harry was beautiful, and the angel, for all her height, seemed tiny beside him, yet there was something…

It was the eyes, he thought. Why had he never noticed before? Lord Sean’s strange, black eyes, darker than night, were exactly the same shade. And the hair, so black it was almost blue. That, too, was the same. Why, aside from Lord Sean’s homeliness, they might have been brother and sister!

Like everyone else, Stomald knew Lord Sean and Lord Tamman were more than human—one had only to watch their blinding reflexes or see them occasionally forget to hide their incredible strength to know that—but it hadn’t occurred to him they might share the angels’ blood!

The thought was somehow chilling. Lord Sean and Lord Tamman were mortal. They both insisted on that, and Stomald believed them, and that meant they couldn’t be related to angels. Besides, Holy Writ said all angels were female, and how could mortal blood mingle with divine? And yet … what if—?

He thrust the idea aside. It was disrespectful at best, and, a hidden part of him knew guiltily, it sprang from an unforgivable yearning that would have appalled him had he faced it squarely.

Tamman leaned against the thyru tree, watching the road to the east, then glanced back up at the man perched in the branches with his mirror. Pardalian armies had surprisingly sophisticated signal systems, but both mirrors and flags were “daylight-only,” and the afternoon was passing.

He wanted to pace, but that would never do for an angelically chosen war captain. Besides, he was out here instead of Sean expressly to win his men’s confidence, which might be important tomorrow, so he contented himself with crushing dried thyru husks under his heel. The thyru resembled an enormous acorn, but its soft, i

He realized his mind was straying and tinkered with his adrenaline levels. He didn’t really know why he was watching the road so hard. Unlike his scouts, he had a direct link to Israel’s sca

He gave himself a shake and moved along the line, patting shoulders and exchanging smiles. Pardalian armies knew about mounted firearms—indeed, most Pardalian cavalry were dragoons—but they’d never been a real threat. While handy for scouting and harassment, dragoons could wear only light armor, their shorter muskets had neither the range nor rate of fire to stand off pikemen, and you couldn’t put pikes on branahlks. But these dragoons were something new, for their joharns were rifled. Not, he reminded himself, that this was the time to show the Holy Host all they could do. That would come tomorrow.

He reached the end of the line and strolled back to his tree, then rechecked his uplink. Well, how about that?Looks like I spent just about exactly the right time with the troops.

“Rethvan?” He glanced up at the signaler once more.

“Yes, Captain?”

“I expect their point to round the bend in about five minutes. Get ready to pass the signal.”

“At once, Lord Tamman.” Rethvan couldn’t see around that bend, but he sounded so confident Tamman gri

The westering sunlight turned steadily redder, and a corner of his mind looked down through the sca

The first mounted scout rounded the bend exactly on cue.

“Send it, Rethvan.” He was pleased by how calm he sounded.

“Yes, Captain.”

The flashing mirror alerted the outposts to the west, and Tamman heard branahlks whistle behind his hill as their holders got them ready, but it was only a distant background. His attention was on the advancing company of Temple Guard cavalry, and his eyes slipped into telescopic mode.

They looked tired, and little wonder. Lord Marshal Rokas had moved fast once he started. The logistic capabilities of Pardalian armies amazed Tamman; he’d expected something like Earth’s pike-and-musket era, but Pardal had nioharqs. The huge, tusked critters—they reminded him of elephant-sized hogs—could eat almost anything, which made forage far less of a problem than it had been for horse-powered armies, and their sustained speed was astonishing. True, their low top speed made them useless as cavalry, but they let Pardalians move artillery, rations, tents, portable forges, and mobile kitchens at a rate which would have turned Gustavus Adolphus green with envy.

Even so, Rokas’s troops had to be feeling the pace. Sean had sealed the borders, and the Temple didn’t know diddly about their deployment—their remotes couldn’t penetrate the Temple itself, but they’d eavesdropped on enough of Rokas’s field conferences to prove that. Yet the lord marshal had made a pretty fair estimate of their maximum possible strength, and he wasn’t worrying about subtle maneuvers. He was going to throw enough bodies at them to plow them under and bull right through … he thought.

Tamman’s smile was evil as he watched the scouts advance. They might be tired, but they seemed alert. Unfortunately for them, however, they were watching for threats inside the range they “knew” Pardalian weapons had.

“Let’s get ready, boys,” he said quietly as the first branahlk passed the four-hundred-meter range stakes. A soft chorus of responses came back, and his hundred dragoons settled down in their paired-off positions. He watched them sighting across fallen trees and logs as Rokas’ scouts closed to just over two hundred meters. That was still far beyond aimed smoothbore range, but some of them were begi

“Fire!” he barked, and fifty rifled joharns cracked as one.

The muzzle flashes were bright in the shadows of the grove, and powder smoke stung his nose, but his attention was on the scouts. Thirty or more went down—many, he was sure, dismounted rather than hit; branahlks were bigger targets than men—and the others gaped at the smoke cloud rising from the trees. Tamman gri

“Okay, boys, saddle up,” Tamman said, and gri