Read Online A Mighty Fortress by David Weber - Free Book Online

would have been a stiff enough challenge for almost anyone. Given Chermyn’s distaste for politics, coupled with his previous lifelong success at avoiding anything that even smacked of duty at court, it would have been difficult to find someone who felt less suited to the task.
    Fortunately for the Empire of Charis, it had never occurred to Hauwyl Chermyn to decline his present post. And the reason that was fortunate was that no matter how ill- suited he might have considered himself, he was almost certainly the very best man available for the job. The viceroy general might not like politics, and he might be unpolished (to say the very least) by courtly standards, but that didn’t mean he didn’t understand politics, and his iron sense of duty and integrity was coupled with a bulldog pugnacity any fool could sense from clear across a room.
    There was no doubt that the noblemen and commoners who’d assembled in Parliament here in Manchyr had sensed it, at any rate, and none of them had been stupid enough to challenge him. Not openly, at any rate. Zhanstyn had no doubt that quite a few conversations in various cloakrooms and private apartments had centered on clandestine ways to evade Chermyn’s determination to enforce the policies Emperor Cayleb had laid out before his own departure for Chisholm. For the moment, though, the viceroy general had his hand firmly around the throat of Corisande’s great lords.
    That had been made easier by the fact that, like the wealthier members of the House of Commons, the great aristocrats had too much to lose. That made them cautious, unwilling to attempt open resistance, especially after Chermyn—in his blunt, unpolished, uncourtly, yet crystal- clear style—had made it abundantly plain what he intended to do to any noble who violated his new oath of fealty to the Charisian Crown. The fact that diplomatic circumlocution was so utterly foreign to him had gone a great way towards making certain no one in his audience doubted for a moment that he’d meant every word he said. And that any excuses about oaths to the excommunicated not being binding would leave him remarkably unmoved when he and his siege artillery turned up outside any oathbreaker’s castle walls.
    “But pain in the arse or not,” Chermyn continued now, swinging away from the window to face the brigadier, hands still clasped behind him, “it’s the way it’s got to be. For now, at least.” He grimaced. “Mind you, I’d like nothing better than to get my hands on the damned ringleaders! There’s not much doubt in my mind that most of these poor bastards’re being more or less led around by the nose.” He made a disgusted sound midway between a snort and a snarl. “And I’ve read the damned broadsides, same as you. Somebody’s stirring this pot, and I’ve no doubt His Majesty was right about what it is they’re after. Which is why I’m not going to give it to them.”
    “Yes, Sir,” Zhanstyn acknowledged. Although, truth to tell, it wasn’t exactly as if he’d objected to the viceroy general’s instructions or policy. On the other hand, he was pretty sure Chermyn knew he understood his superior’s “explanation” was more in the nature of a way for Chermyn to let off pressure of his own before it did him a mischief.
    “The last thing we need to offer up to the bastards behind all this are martyrs,” Chermyn growled now, turning his head to look back at the water-streaming panes of glass. “I think most of these people are at least willing to keep their heads down, if the troublemakers’ll just leave them alone. I’m not saying we could keep the lid on the pot forever, but all we really have to do is keep it screwed down until Anvil Rock, Tartarian, and the rest of the Regency Council get their feet on the ground. Build up at least a little legitimacy. That business at the Cathedral the other day”— he turned his head back, his eyes meeting Zhanstyn’s suddenly—“that could’ve turned