by David Weber
And so he paced his solitary camp, not wanting even the company of Halifu's soldiers, since anyone's presence would rub him raw, like sand in a open wound.
My fault, he thought bitterly, even though he knew—in his saner moments—that it was a lie. He wasn't responsible for whatever was happening out there, but he was the one who'd sent them to meet it, because Darcel Kinlafia wasn't just a Voice; he was also a Portal Hound.
That wasn't the technical name for his secondary Talent, but it was the one everyone associated with the Portal Authority used. No one had yet found a way to actually detect and pinpoint the locations of portals, but a Hound had a special affinity to whatever disturbance in the fabric of creation brought them into existence. No Hound could reliably quantify what he sensed, he couldn't pluck distances and classifications out of thin air, and yet Darcel simply "knew" the compass bearing to the nearest portal. He had absolutely no way of knowing how far away it might be, but he knew which way to go to find the closest one.
Well, that wasn't entirely correct. A larger portal might appear to be closer than a smaller one which was actually much nearer to a Hound's physical location. But the Hounds, who were even rarer than Mappers of Jathmar's strength, were utterly invaluable to any exploration team.
It was Darcel who'd found the immense portal which had first admitted them to this universe. It was Darcel who'd realized that they'd stumbled upon yet another lobe of the cluster which had brought them here.
And it was Darcel Kinlafia who'd sent his dearest friends towards the nearest/strongest portal he'd been able to "scent" . . . and directly into the horror which had been awaiting Falsan.
Stop that! he snapped at himself. Ghartoun's one of the most experienced people in the game. He knows how to handle himself and a crew. They'll be all right. Surely they'll be all right.
Shalana's mercy, please let them be all right.
He'd already relayed Shaylar's message. Even now, it was rushing back along the transit chain, Voice to Voice, portal to portal, universe to universe, through dozens—hundreds—of telepathic Voices, all passing along the frantic message.
Warn the homeworld!
The Portal Authority wasn't designed to meet this kind of emergency. Oh, the notion had been bandied about, but not seriously. Not in the eighty years mankind had been exploring through the portals. There were—thank all the gods—forts at every portal, and larger military bases at central nodes, even this far out. But that was entirely to police the homeworld's own portal traffic and to provide security for settlers and survey crews threatened by bandits. The possibility of something like this had been only a theoretical one, and one which had become increasingly less likely seeming as exploration spread further and further outward with absolutely no sign of any other human civilization.
When Shaylar's warning had come in, he'd gone back through the portal to relay, then found Company-Captain Halifu and delivered the disturbing message to him in person. Grafin Halifu had dispatched Platoon-Captain Hulmok Arthag and half his cavalry platoon—the only one assigned to him—to find the civilian crew and escort them safely back, if they could only make rendezvous with one another in time.
Darcel had asked—almost begged—for permission to accompany that platoon, but Halifu had denied it. And rightfully so, Darcel admitted, however grudgingly. He was the only Voice Halifu had. If anything happened to him, Halifu would have no one to relay his own reports further up the chain.
And so, Darcel could only stay here, pacing, worrying, wondering if Arthag and his men would reach Shaylar and the rest of his family in time. But that, he knew, was up to the unknown adversary, to the faceless person or persons who'd killed poor Falsan. Blood had already been shed, but surely it wouldn't come to open warfare? Only madmen would want to provoke that kind of—
We're under attack!
The scream was a knife, tearing into his brain.
Then the connection deepened, and the images thundered like a runaway freight train into his shocked senses. He staggered, actually went to his knees. Men in uniforms were shooting at him—shooting with crossbows. A quarrel thudded into thick wood two feet from his head. Gunfire cracked everywhere. Men screamed. A hail of bullets mowed down the uniformed soldiers standing out in the open. Only one of them survived long enough to drop and disappear in the tangled timber about him, and Darcel gasped as his gaze swung to another pile of shattered trees.
Ghartoun!
Dead, sprawled obscenely across a tangle of broken branches. Sightless eyes widened shocked, face twisted in pain and terror.
"Reload!" Boris Kasell was shouting from somewhere just to his right. "There's more of them back in the trees, trying to work around! Rilthan, watch our flank!"
"Shaylar." It was Jathmar, his voice choked with fright. "Shaylar—are you all right?"
"Yes. Yes, I'm—Here they come!"
Three men appeared, carrying . . . something. A strange object, perhaps four feet long and two or three inches in diameter, made out of what looked like glass. No, not glass. Rock crystal? It didn't seem to be either, but it certainly wasn't metal, and—
Crossbow fire screamed out of the woodline to their right. Somebody shrieked in agony behind him. Darcel—or Shaylar, if there was a difference—jerked around and saw Braiheri Futhai writhing on the ground. A steel shaft protruding from his chest, high and to the right. Blood was pooling, foaming on his lips, and—
Flame erupted from nowhere at all.
A huge, incandescent fireball ripped into the toppled trees. Smoke blinded him. Someone else was screaming.
"Shoot the gunners!"
It was Barris, shouting through the smoke and confusion, and Darcel's eyes whipped back to the men with the not-crystal tube. It was mounted on a tripod, now, pointed in their direction, like some sort of weird fieldgun.
"Shoot the gunners!" Barris bellowed again.
Darcel felt his hands move as Shaylar snatched up the rifle. It shook wildly.
Steady! he told the portion of his mind that was Shaylar. Better . . . Yes, much better . . . Brace it . . . That's right. Sight picture—front sight—center it—NOW!
The rifle kicked, the bullet cracked, and one of the enemy gunners jerked, screamed, and went to one knee.
Again!
Others were shooting, too, picking off the gunners steadily.
"They're coming in from the right!" Elevu Gitel shouted, and Jathmar spat curses above Darcel's head and twisted around, shooting at the fresh crossbowmen coming in along their vulnerable flank. Two men went down . . . three . . .
"How many of them are there?" the Mapper gasped. A quarrel thwacked wood two inches from his cheek, buried in the tree trunk he crouched behind. "Bastards!"
He fired at them again, cursed, and ducked down to reload, shoving the cartridges into the loading gate while all the universe roared and screamed madly about him.
Another fireball erupted from somewhere. Dried leaves and twigs burst into flame. Someone was screaming—high and mindless, on and on.
"Where's it coming from?" Jathmar demanded hoarsely.
There were two of the not-artillery things out there now, and the original one had acquired a new crew. The other was fifty yards from the first one, identical to it. And pointed almost dead at Darcel. It started to glow, like eldritch fire, or the northern lights at midwinter, and—
Flame was everywhere.
Darcel flung himself to the ground. Heat seared its way past, just above his back. He didn't dare breathe. He squeezed both eyes shut. Heard ghastly howls that belonged to human beings in mortal agony. . . .
Blessed cool air rushed in. He gulped down, coughed on smoke and the acrid stench of burnt wood and what smelled sickeningly like roasting meat. The tree trunk above him was smoking, bark blasted off in places.
"What the fuck was that?" It was Jathmar's voice. Thick, terrified.
"DOWN!" Shaylar screamed.
Another fireball ripped across them. Someone was still shooting. Cursing monoton
ously and shooting, mindless with terrible rage. Darcel grabbed for the rifle he'd dropped, shouted at Shaylar's stunned mind.
They're coming in a mass! Shoot!
Infantry erupted across the smoldering wreckage of the clearing. Fifteen, maybe twenty of them. Shaylar snatched the rifle to her shoulder, pulled the trigger. Worked the lever, took another shot . . . worked the lever . . . took another shot.
They fired the rifle dry, and the bastards were still coming. No time to reload. Darcel weget. nt for Shaylar's Polshana, but it was Shaylar who acquired the first tarShe brought the gun up two-handed, centered a charging soldier, squeezed the double-action trigger. The man staggered, clutched at his chest, and then his face exploded as their second hollow-nosed slug hit him squarely in the forehead and she shot him down like carrion.
Rilthan wreaked havoc on the center of the charging line. Each time his rifle cracked, a soldier screamed and sprawled in the debris, leaving a widening gap in the middle of their line. Shaylar tracked to the side, acquiring a target at the right hand end of the charge and firing, again and again, as she worked her way inward, and Darcel knew their revolver was almost empty.
The charge wavered. Halted. Broke apart. Shaken soldiers ran back into the cover of the trees, and someone was shouting orders from back there. More men were moving into position. Gods—how many of them were there?
Reload! Darcel shrieked at Shaylar through their connected minds. Reload!
Shaylar swung out the Polshana's cylinder, tipped it up, hit the ejection rod. Empty cases fell glittering to the leaves, and her left hand steadied the cylinder as her right snatched the speedloader from her pocket. The fresh rounds slid into the cylinder, perfectly aligned despite her choking terror, and she twisted the speedloader's release knob and dropped it, even as her left hand snapped the cylinder back into place. Then she reholstered the revolver and reached for the ammunition box ready at her elbow. Reloaded the rifle with hands which had steadied down to a mind-numbed, rote-smooth motion. Cartridge in, press it down, next cartridge in, press it down—
Darcel caught motion from the corner of his eye. He slewed around, and Shaylar brought the rifle with them, rising to a half-crouch and firing as a third artillery crew laid in their fire mission.
"Jathmar! Down!"
Two blasts erupted from the mouth of hell.
A fireball ripped through the fallen trees again—and writhing through the incandescent flames came a jagged streak of lightning. It slammed into Barris Kasell, who was still shouting orders. For one horrifying second, he twisted in midair, lit by blue actinic fire that burst from his very skin.
Thunder struck. Fire crackled everywhere. The entire world was ablaze. Then the cool air was back again, and they gasped, shuddering fighting for breath.
Shaylar passed her rifle to Jathmar to give him a backup weapon and fumbled for her pack. She yanked it open and started dragging out her maps, her notebooks—the records of every universe they'd mapped, with the locations of every portal in the cluster they'd been exploring, and—far worse—every portal between here and Sharona itself.
She dragged them out, snatched a branch from a blazing pile of deadwood, touched flame to each and every map in her possession. Burned them to ash. Ripped out notebook pages and fed them to the flames, as well. Rifles cracked, men screamed horribly, and still she consigned pages to the flames, destroying her work in a desperate bid to keep the savage killers from overrunning every portal they could reach. And even as she burned them, Darcel heard fewer and fewer rifles still firing, knew his friends—his family—were dying around her under the fury of those impossible, horrifying balls of flame and bolts of lightning.
She set the final page aflame, then tossed the leather binder and map case themselves into the burning deadwood. Only a handful of rifles were still spitting defiance, and she snatched out her Polshana again, turned back towards her firing position.
And then it happened.
Jathmar had realized what she was doing, and how important it was. He'd stood over her, firing steadily, protecting her while she worked. But as she tossed the final load into the flames, he jumped down to pull her back to a safer spot . . . just as another fireball struck. It caught his back, flung him against a fallen, crosswise tree branch. His belly and chest struck hard, and he doubled up around the wood, pinned for horrible seconds with flames scorching his back.
His clothes ignited. Fire crisped hair and skin.
"JATHMAR!"
This scream tore her throat. Shaylar and Darcel were scrambling forward, trying to reach Jathmar as he slid off a branch and fell to the ground. Lightning branched and slammed inches away. The concussion of thunder hurled them sideways. Their head struck something incredibly hard with bone-crushing force—
Darcel exploded back into his own body.
The air was clear. No smoke. No screams. No dying men. The portal, silent as sunlight, stood thirty yards to his left as he lay sprawled across the ground. Psychic shock held him immobile for long, soul-shaking moments. He heard distant voices shouting and saw someone running toward him from the far side of the portal, where a slow but steady rain was falling. Darcel shoved himself into a sitting position, groped for a rifle that wasn't there. Then he realized who it was running toward him. Grafin Halifu, himself. Commander of the new fort that was only three hundred yards from where Darcel lay sprawled, stunned, in the sunlight.
"What's wrong?" Halifu demanded, his own rifle in his hand as he closed the last ten yards. "You started shouting something about soldiers in the woodline!"
Darcel lifted unsteady hands, scrubbed his face, tried to reorient himself.
"Attack," he managed to say in a wheezing groan. "Our crew's under attack. Infantry, artillery fire—"
"What?" Halifu's face washed white with shock.
"I was linked with Shaylar." Darcel shut his eyes. "Oh, gods—Shaylar!"
He tried to contact her, tried frantically to get through. But he found only deathly cold silence.
"She's not—" Halifu's horror-choked voice broke off, unwilling—or unable—to complete the question.
"I don't know." Darcel was shaking, unable to control the runaway tremors. "We were hit by an artillery blast of some kind. Thrown by the concussion. Hit our head on something."
He wrapped his arms about himself, gulped down air.
"Ghartoun's dead. So are Barris Kasell and Braiheri Futhai. Elevu Gitel. And if Jathmar's still alive—oh, gods, the burns were horrible—"
He realized he was rocking back and forth only when someone else's arm around his shoulders steadied him and Halifu pressed something metallic against his chattering teeth.
"Drink!"
Darcel gulped, choked, wheezed as the whiskey went down. His eyes smarted . . . but his whirling senses steadied.
"Thanks," he whispered as the world stopped looping around him.
More people were arriving from the fort, armed for battle and staring a little wildly at the trees around Darcel's camp. Company-Captain Halifu got a second deep gulp of whiskey into him, then waited until the worst of the shakes had eased up.
"Can you give me a report now?" he asked quietly.
Darcel couldn't look into the officer's worried eyes. He knew if he did, he wouldn't be able to speak at all. So he stared at the ground instead and started to talk.
He rambled, his voice unsteady and hoarse, trying to convey the horror, the terrifyingly alien attack, the inexplicable weapons that had sent death crashing across the terrified, outnumbered survey crew. Most of them were civilians, totally unprepared to deal with something as brutal as an all-out attack by trained troops.
Darcel realized he'd finished talking when Company-Captain Halifu ripped out a hideous oath. He clenched his jaws so tightly his teeth creaked, still sitting on the ground.
"Stinking bastards!" Halifu snarled. "I may be supposed to have a company here, but all I've got is two understrength platoons, less than a hundred and fifty men, and Platoon-Captain Arthag's cav
alry detachment. And he's riding straight into a trap with half of his men right fucking now! I can't possibly meet an attack by weapons like that—not without reinforcements—and we're over five thousand miles from the nearest railhead! The column from Fort Salby's due any day, but how close it is yet is anyone's guess."
The fort's commander made himself stop, draw a deep breath. He stepped back from his rage and fear and shook his head.
"Armsman chan Therson!"
"Sir!"
Chief-Armsman Dunyar chan Therson, Bronze Company's senior noncom, snapped to attention.
"Get Bantha. Tell him we need to get a dispatch to Petty Captain Arthag at once. He's to stop where he is and hold position."