by David Weber
"But why all the secrecy?" Jasak asked. She looked at him, and he shrugged. "The UTTTA must the champing at the bit to get this deployed, so why was Magister Halathyn so busy insisting that he wasn't really up to anything?"
"I didn't have anything to do with UTTTA, or any other official part of the Union," she replied. It seemed evident from her toad and her expression that she really would have preferred to leave it at that, but after glancing at him consideringly for a second or two, she shrugged.
"You may have heard that magisters can be just a little . . . paranoid about their research." She smiled briefly, and Jasak managed to turn a laugh into a not particularly convincing cough. "A little paranoid," in this case, was rather like saying that White Mist Lake was "a little damp."
"Well, all right, maybe it goes a bit further than that," she said with a reluctant grin. But the grin faded quickly, and she shook her head. "In fact, it goes a lot further than that where Magister Halathyn is concerned. Especially for something like this. There's no way he was going to let even a whisper about this project out where the Mythalans might hear about it before he was ready to publish."
Jasak nodded in suddenly sober understanding of his own.
"While I'd never like to suggest that Magister Halathyn doesn't hold you in the highest respect, Hundred Olderhan," she continued, "the real reason we're out here? It's the farthest away from the Mythal Falls Academy he could get for his field test. And—"
She paused, looking at him with the sort of measuring, considering look he was unused to receiving. After a moment, she seemed to reach some inner decision and leaned closer to him, lowering her voice slightly.
"Actually," she said quietly, "we've done a bit of refining on his original theoretical work, as well. The sort which requires absolute validation before anyone publishes. I have to admit that I didn't really expect to be able to test all of the features in a single trip, but take a look at this."
She tapped the unit with her wand, and both waterfalls and the arrow disappeared instantly. A brief moment passed, and then they lit again . . . but this time, they were noticeably different.
She looked up at Jasak, one eyebrow crooked, and he frowned. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened and he gave her a very sharp glance indeed.
"Exactly," she said, even more quietly. "Magister Halathyn's original idea was to produce a unit which would detect the closest portal and home a survey team in on it. But once we got into the theory, we discovered that we could actually nest the spells."
"So that—" Jasak indicated the display, "—means there's a second gate out here?"
"If it's working properly. And—"
She tapped the display again. And again. And a fourth time. With each tap, the process repeated, producing new directional arrows and new distance and strength displays, and Jasak swallowed.
"Is that why Magister Halathyn's been talking in terms of a cluster?" he asked, and she nodded.
"Either the thing's completely screwed up—which is always possible, however little we might want to admit it—or else there are at least a total of five portals associated with this one." A jerk of her head indicated the swamp portal. "Or, more precisely, this one is one of at least five associated with this one," she amended, bringing up the original display on the strongest and nearest of the other portals.
"You said 'at least,'" Jasak observed intently, and she nodded again.
"We never expected to hit anything like this on our first field test, Sir Jasak, so there are only a total of six 'slots' in the spellware. In theory, we could nest as many as fifteen or twenty—it just never occurred to us to do it. I suppose that was partly because the Zholhara Cluster only has six portals, and it seemed unlikely anyone might find one even bigger."
"Gods," Jasak breathed. He stared at the unit for several seconds, then shook himself. "I'm beginning to see why you were keeping this whole thing so quiet!"
"I thought you might. Still," her eyes brightened, "as happy as I am with how well it seems to be performing, I think you may still be missing something about this cluster as compared to Zholhara."
"What?" He moved his gaze from the unit to her face,
"The Zholhara portals are as much as three thousand miles apart. The maximum range on our detector—assuming we got our sums right—is only about nine hundred miles. In fact, according to the readouts, the farthest one we've detected is less than six hundred miles from this portal right here."
Jasak sucked in a deep, hard breath. A minimum of five virgin portals, all within a radius of only six hundred miles of one another? Gods! They could have five entirely new transit chains radiating from this single spot! It took him several seconds to wrap his mind around the implications, and then he smiled crookedly.
"So that's why Magister Halathyn's like a gryphon in a henhouse!"
"Oh, that's exactly what he's like," she agreed with a grin. "And it'd take a special act of God to get him out of here before every one of these portals is nailed down. Assuming, of course, that they're really there. Don't forget that this is our first field trial. It's going to be mighty embarrassing if it has us out here chasing some sort of wild goose!"
"Not very likely with both of you involved in chasing the goose in question, Magister Kelbryan," he told her with a grin. She waved one hand in an almost uncomfortable gesture, and he gave a tiny nod of acknowledgment and shifted conversational gears.
"Well, I guess we'll know one way or the other pretty soon," he said. "How far away from the nearest are we now?"
"Assuming Magister Halathyn and I got it right when we built this thing, it's about thirty miles that way," she replied, pointing almost due north, directly away from White Mist Lake.
"About fifteen hours hard hike, in this terrain," Jasak said thoughtfully. "Twice that with rest breaks, a bivouac, and the need to find the best trails. And that assumes basically decent going the entire way."
He glanced at the local time display, then craned his neck, looking up through a break in the autumnal canopy at the sun, and grimaced. The local days were getting short at this time of year, and there was absolutely no way they were going to make it before dusk, he decided, and raised his voice.
"Fifty Garlath!"
"Sir?" Shevan Garlath was a lean, lanky, dark-haired man, almost ten years older than Jasak, despite his junior rank. Although he'd been born in Yanko, his family had migrated from one of the smaller Hilmaran kingdoms barely fifty years earlier, and it showed in his strong nose and very dark eyes as he turned towards the hundred.
"We need to swing a little further east," Jasak said, chopping one hand in the direction indicated by Kelbryan's illuminated needle. "About another thirty miles. We'll move on for another three or four hours, then bivouac. Keep an eye out for a good site. "
"Yes, Sir," Garlath responded crisply enough to fool a casual bystander into thinking he was actually a competent officer. Then he nodded to his platoon sword.
"You heard the Hundred, Sword Hernak," he said.
"Yes, Sir," the stocky, neatly bearded noncom acknowledged, and went trotting briskly ahead to overtake the platoon's point and redirect its course. Jasak watched him go and reflected on how fortunate Garlath was to have inherited a platoon sword good enough to make even him look almost capable.
Platoon-Captain Janaki chan Calirath jerked upright in his sleeping bag so suddenly the nearest sentry jumped in surprise. Under-Armsman chan Yaran whipped around at his platoon commander's abrupt movement, then flinched as a huge, dark-barred peregrine falcon launched itself from the perch beside the's sleeping bag. The bird screamed in hard, angry challenge, hurling itself into the clear, cold night to circle overhead furiously . . . protectively.
Yaran stood for a moment, waiting for the platoon-captain to say something—anything. But the platoon-captain only sat there. He didn't even move.
"Sir?" chan Yaran said tentatively. There was no response, and the under-armsman stepped a little closer. "Platoon-Captain?"
Still no respo
nse, and chan Yaran began to sweat, despite the chill breeze blowing across the encampment. There was something . . . ominous about the officer's total immobility. That would have been true under any circumstances, but Janaki chan Calirath wasn't any old Imperial Marine officer. No one was supposed to take any official notice of that, but every member of the platoon-captain's command was a Ternathian (which, chan Yaran knew, wasn't exactly an accident), and that made this officer's petrified lack of response downright frightening.
Chan Yaran moved to the side until he could see his CO's face in the firelight. The platoon-captain's eyes were wide open, unblinking, glittering with reflected fire, and chan Yaran swallowed hard. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
He looked around, then leaned closer to the officer.
"Your Highness?" he said very, very quietly.
The wide, fixed eyes never even flickered around their core of firelight, and he muttered a soft, heartfelt curse. Then he drew a deep breath and crossed to another sleeping bag and touched its occupant's shoulder lightly.
Chief-Armsman Lorash chan Braikal twitched upright almost as abruptly as the platoon-captain had. Unlike the officer, however, Third Platoon's senior noncom was instantly and totally aware of his surroundings. chan Braikal hadn't drawn his present slot by random chance, and his eyes tracked around to chan Yaran like twin pistol muzzles.
"What?"
The one-word question was quiet and remarkably clear of sleepiness for someone so abruptly awakened. It came out almost conversationally, but chan Yaran wasn't deceived. chan Braikal wasn't the sort to jump down anyone's throat without thorough justification. Gods help you if you screwed up so seriously enough to give him that justification, though.
"It's the Platoon-Captain, Chief," chan Yaran said, and chan Braikal's eyes snapped wider. "He just . . . sat up," the under-armsman said. "Now he's just staring straight ahead, right into the fire. He's not even blinking, Chief!"
"Vothan's chariot," chan Braikal muttered. He shoved himself upright and crossed to the platoon-captain's side. He knelt there, looking into the young officer's eyes, but taking extraordinary care not to touch him.
"Shouldn't we . . . well, do something, Chief?" chan Yaran asked. chan Braikal only snorted harshly, never looking away from Third Platoon's commanding officer.
"There's fuck-all anyone can do," the senior chief-armsman growled. "Not till it runs its course, anyway."
"Is . . . is it a Glimpse?" chan Yaran's voice was almost a whisper, and chan Braikal barked a laugh deep in his throat.
"You've seen just as many Glimpses as I have," he said. "But I'm damned if I can think of anything else that would hit him like this. Can you?"
chan Yaran shook his head wordlessly.
"What I thought," chan Braikal grunted, and sat back on his heels. He gazed at the Crown Prince of Ternathia's profile for several seconds, then sighed.
"One thing we can do," he said, looking up at chan Yaran at last. "Break out that bottle of whiskey in my saddlebag. He may just need it in a little while."
chan Yaran nodded again and hurried off. The chief-armsman scarcely even noticed his departure, although half his reason for sending chan Yaran off had been to give the other Marine something to do as a distraction. Now if someone could just distract him, as well.
The tough, experienced noncom snorted again, without a trace of humor. Third Platoon was still a week out from Fort Brithik on its way forward to reinforce Company-Captain Halifu. The mountains were far behind them them, as they headed out across the broad stretch of plains to Brithik, but the autumn nights were cold under the brilliant stars. They were also indescribably lonely out here under the endless canopy of the prairie heavens. The ninety-seven men of Third Platoon—outfits this close to the frontier were always at least a little understrength, and Third Platoon was lucky to be only eleven men short of establishment—were a tiny band of humanity amid these ancient mountains which had never known the step of man.
Lorash chan Braikal had joined the Imperial Marines seventeen years before largely because he'd known Marines tended to get sent places just like this. Places on virgin worlds, where the emptiness stretched out forever, wild and free. Over his career, he'd seen thousands of them, and along the way he'd discovered that he'd made exactly the right choice when he enlisted.
But tonight, he felt the vast emptiness of a planet not yet home to man stretching out around him in all directions, sucking at his soul like a vacuum as he knelt here in this fragile bubble of firelight, watching the heir to the imperial crown in the grip of a precognitive Glimpse of terrifying power.
Gods, the chief-armsman thought. Gods, I wish we'd never left Fort Raylthar!
But they had, and there was nothing he could do but wait until Prince Janaki woke back up and told them what vision had seized him by the throat.
Well, wait and pray.
The next morning dawned clear and considerably chillier. There was frost on their bedrolls, and Jasak found it difficult to radiate a sense of lighthearted adventure as he dragged himself out of his sleeping bag's seductive warmth. Magister Kelbryan, on the other hand, looked almost disgustingly cheerful. She'd taken being the only woman in the expedition in stride, but Jasak had unobtrusively seen to it that her sleeping bag was close to his. Not because he distrusted his men—the Second Andarans were an elite outfit, proud of their reputation—but because his father's maxim that it was always easier to prevent problems than to solve them had been programmed into him at an almost instinctual level.
And, he admitted cheerfully as he watched her rolling her bag as tightly as any of his troopers, because he enjoyed her company. It was even more enjoyable talking with her than looking at her, and that was saying quite a bit.
He chuckled, shaking his head in self-reproving amusement, but then his humor faded a bit as he listened to Fifty Garlath issuing his morning orders.
His "discussion" with Garlath the evening before had been even more unpleasant than he'd anticipated. The fifty had always resented Jasak. Everyone in the Second Andarans—and in the entire Arcanan Army, for that matter—knew Sir Jasak Olderhan was the only son of Commander of Five Thousand Sir Thankhar Olderhan, Arcanan Army, retired. Who also happened to be His Grace Sir Thankhar Olderhan, Governor of High Hathak, Duke of Garth Showma, Earl of Yar Khom, and Baron Sarkhala . . . and more to the point, perhaps, the man who had commanded the Second Andaran Scout Brigade for over fourteen years before his medical retirement. The Second Andarans were, for all intents and purposes, an hereditary command of the Dukes of Garth Showma, and had been for almost a hundred and seventy years. In fact, they had originally been raised as "The Duke of Garth Showma's Own Rangers."
All of which meant that although Jasak might on paper be only one of the brigade's twelve company commanders, he was actually a little more equal than any of the others. Jasak himself had always known that, and the knowledge had driven him to demonstrate that he deserved the preferential treatment an accident of birth had bestowed upon him. Unfortunately, not everyone recognized that, and the Arcanan Army's tradition, particularly in its Andaran units, was for officers and noncoms to remain within their original brigade or division for their entire careers. It produced a powerful sense of unit identification and was an undoubted morale enhancer, but it could also enhance petty resentments and hostilities. Family quarrels, after all, are almost always nastier than quarrels between strangers.
Shevan Garlath remembered the day a skinny, gawky young Squire Olderhan, fresh out of the Academy, had reported for duty. Shevan Garlath had been a commander of fifty then . . . and he still was. Barring a miracle or the direct intervention of the gods themselves, and despite the fact that he was the younger cousin of a baron, he would still be a commander of fifty when he reached mandatory retirement age. Not even his aristocratic cousin possessed the pull to get someone of his demonstrated inability promoted any higher than that. But since he wasn't prepared to admit that it was because of his own feckless incompetence, it had t
o be because other people—people like then-Squire and now-Commander of One Hundred Olderhan—had stolen the promotions he deserved because their connections were even loftier then his own.
He'd listened to Jasak expressionlessly, without saying a word . . . and certainly without ever acknowledging that a single one of the Jasak's tactful criticisms or suggestions was merited. Jasak had wanted to strangle him, but he'd been forced to admit that it was his own fault. He ought to have jerked Garlath up short six weeks ago, when the man was first transferred from Baker Company to Charlie Company as an emergency medical relief for Fifty Thaylar. But he'd told himself it was only a temporary arrangement, just until Thaylar returned from hospital and he could pack Garlath back off to Baker. So instead of sorting the idiot out—or getting rid of him—then, Jasak had let things slide. And now, as his father had always warned him, he was discovering just how much more difficult it was to correct a problem than it would have been to prevent it in the first place.