by David Weber
"I know you do," the regiment-captain said quietly. "And for what it's worth—and it may not feel like it's worth very much at this particular moment—I think it's a damned shame. About the uniform, I mean. There are some people who simply wear it without ever learning what it really means. You already knew that when you arrived. I think you would have been one of the really good ones."
"Actually, that means quite a lot coming from you, Sir," Janaki replied. He inhaled again, then stood. "With your permission, Sir, I'd better go and alert the Platoon that we won't be staying over after all. At least everyone ought to have time to get a hot bath and a sitdown meal in a proper mess hall before we hit the road again."
"Of course." Velvelig stood as well, then reached across the desk to offer his right hand. "Good luck, Your Highness. And I hope you won't object if a heathen Arpathian spends the odd night hour praying for you and your father." He smiled crookedly as the prince clasped his hand firmly. "After all, it could hardly hurt, could it?"
Petty Armsman Harth Loumas sat in the hot patch of shade cast by the small canvas tarp and tried to ignore the insects whining around his ears. He told himself that, despite the bugs' irritation quotient, he couldn't really object to his present duty. Or, he shouldn't, anyway; obviously he could, because he was. All the same, he knew that most of his fellow PAAF troopers would willingly have exchanged places with him. For one thing, he did get to sit in the shade, which was more than they got to do. He knew that, and in an intellectual sort of way, he actually agreed. But that wasn't exactly the same thing as saying that he actively enjoyed sitting here sweating.
He checked his watch, then closed his eyes again and reached out with his Talent. Loumas had extremely good range for a Plotter, but he was still limited to no more than four miles, and he had to concentrate hard, at any range beyond about two miles, if he wanted to separate human life essences from those of other animals. It took him a good twenty minutes to sweep the total area he could See from his present location, and the portal itself created a huge blind spot in his coverage. Since no Talent could operate through a portal, he had to move physically around to its far aspect in this bug-infested swamp if he wanted to See around it. That was why he was parked at one end of the portal with Tairsal chan Synarch, Company-Captain chan Tesh's senior Flicker. They were outside both the sandbagged outer picket posts and the main defensive position chan Tesh had thrown up on the Hell's Gate side of the portal, but they could shift to the other aspect of the portal by simply walking around it in this universe, which took all of fifteen minutes.
It also meant that if anything did turn up, chan Synarch could nip around to the Hell's Gate side of the portal and Flick a message straight back to chan Tesh and Company-Captain Halifu in a handful of seconds.
Loumas and chan Synarch changed positions every hour on the hour, moving around to the far aspect, in order to maintain a three hundred sixty-degree watch. It was, quite frankly, boring as hell, but it was also necessary. No one had any idea where the enemy troops—the "Arcanans," as they called themselves—had come from. Platoon-Captain Arthag had led sweeps a full fifteen miles out in every direction without finding any sign of human habitation. He'd lost one man and two horses to the local crocodiles in the process, and Company-Captain chan Tesh had decided there was no point in sweeping further out. No officer worth his uniform liked losing men for no return, and if there'd been any evidence of where these people had come from, or how they'd gotten here, some indication of it should have turned up inside that thirty-mile circle. Besides, he hadn't wanted Arthag and any of his men that far out from the field fortifications he'd thrown up here at the portal itself.
Frankly, Loumas was beginning to wonder if there might actually be anything to the wild rumors about flying beasts. He wasn't certain where they'd started. The Arcanan prisoners had all been sent further back, safely beyond the possibility of any attempt to rescue them. Loumas would have preferred for at least some of them to have been kept closer to hand, where the local garrison might have been able to begin learning their language and possibly conduct some useful interrogations. On the other hand, he understood just how vital an intelligence resource those prisoners were, and he could hardly blame Company-Captain chan Tesh or Company-Captain Halifu for wanting to make sure nothing happened to them.
But if none of the prisoners had been spreading ridiculous stories about huge, winged creatures, Loumas had no idea where they might have come from.
Probably a combination of sheer boredom and the fact that we don't know diddily about these people—except that they've got some fucking dangerous weapons!
He snorted in what he wanted to be amusement but which was tinged with something entirely too much like fear for comfort. He reminded himself that the other side obviously didn't know anything more about Sharona and the capabilities of Sharonian weapons than he did about their weapons. The way they'd tried to defend this very portal was proof enough of that! But that didn't make him—or anyone else—any happier about confronting the completely unknown, and the eerie way these people had somehow managed to establish their base camp here without anything remotely like roads or leaving a single boat behind didn't make it any better.
Well, at least they won't be sneaking up on us, he told himself firmly. It may be boring, but I'm damned sure not—
His thoughts froze and he stiffened, focusing in tightly. Then he swore aloud.
Damn! I wish we had a decent Distance Viewer! he thought.
His Talent would let him spot living creatures, but what he Saw of them was always . . . fuzzy. The creatures themselves were clear enough, but exactly what they might be doing, or exactly what their surroundings were, was often almost impossible to discern. Half the time, he had to extrapolate, and like most Plotters, he was fairly good at that. But extrapolation depended on some sort of familiarity with what the people he was Plotting were likely to be doing, and who the hells knew what these people were likely to be up to? If he'd had a Distance Viewer to team with, he'd have been able to coach the other Talent into finding the proper distance and bearing, and the Distance Viewer would have been able to See exactly what was happening.
Loumas closed his eyes, concentrating hard, then punched chan Synarch's shoulder.
"Huh?" The wiry Marine snorted awake. His head snapped up, and his eyes cleared almost instantly as he looked a question at Loumas.
"We've got an incoming contact," Loumas said crisply. "I think it's a small boat, headed in from the east."
chan Synarch nodded sharply and reached into the cargo pocket on his right thigh and extracted a pad of paper and pencil.
"Shoot," he said tersely, pencil poised.
"It's not as clear as I'd like," Loumas admitted, knowing chan Synarch would understand why that was. "They're about four miles out. I can't get much of a feel for the boat, but it's moving damned fast—I make it at least twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, whatever that is in the 'knots' or whatever it is you Ternathian swabbies use."
The two of them grinned tensely at each other, and he continued.
"There's three of them. One of them's in some kind of uniform, but it doesn't look like anything we saw here. I don't think he's wearing a helmet, and his tunic or jacket is red, not the camouflage pattern they had." His hand stabbed in the direction of the wrecked Arcanan fortifications and camp. "I think the other two are in civilian clothes. Doesn't look like any uniform I ever heard of, and they aren't dressed alike. I don't See any weapons on any of them. None of those tube things, and no crossbows anywhere I can See, either." Loumas grimaced. "A Distance Viewer could probably tell us more, but that's all I've got right now."
"Understood." chan Synarch had been writing quickly and clearly in the shorthand every Flicker was trained to use while Loumas talked. Now he read back what he'd written, and Loumas listened carefully, then nodded.
"That's it," he agreed.
"Then I'd better get it off," chan Synarch said. He ripped off the sheet on which he'd written,
folded it, put it into one of the metal carrier cartridges on his belt, and trotted briskly around the edge of the portal until he crossed over into the cool, forested depths of Hell's Gate and had a clear line of sight to Company-Captain chan Tesh's HQ bunker. As soon as he did, he Flicked the message cartridge directly to the company-captain's orderly.
"Sent," he reported laconically to Loumas as he jogged back around to the swamp side, and the Plotter nodded. He was still tracking the incoming boat. In the three minutes it had taken him and chan Synarch to get the message off, the boat had covered almost another mile and a half. It was going to be here in another three minutes—four, tops—and—
A bugle awoke suddenly from the far side of the portal, sounding the "Stand-To," and Loumas exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He watched men double-timing towards their assigned actions stations, and his lips skinned back from his teeth in a tight smile.
I might have missed some kind of super weapon in their frigging boat, he thought, but they aren't going to take us by surprise with whatever it is.
Chapter Forty-Five
Balkar chan Tesh lowered his field glasses with a thoughtful frown. He'd gotten to Platoon-Captain Parai chan Dersal's forward observation post from the Hell's Gate side of the portal while the boat Loumas had detected was still a good mile out. He'd stood beside the Marine and watched it during its final approach, and he hoped his perplexity was less apparent to his men than it was to him.
How the hell do they make the thing move? he wondered. There was no sail, no oars, no paddle, and certainly no steam launch's tall spindly funnel or plume of smoke. Yet the boat—not more than fifteen feet long, at most—came sliding through the deeper channels of the swamp fast enough that its stern squatted and its bow planed across the water.
It's not natural . . . and isn't that a silly thing to be thinking after everything that's already happened out here?
He slowly and deliberately cased the field glasses, then folded his arms and stood waiting while the boat slowed abruptly as it slid the last few dozen yards to the raised hillock before the portal.
As Loumas had reported, there were three men in it. Two of them wore what was obviously civilian clothing of some sort, although—not surprisingly—chan Tesh had never seen garments cut that way. They were much more tightly tailored, more formfitting, than any current Sharonian fashion, and the civilian jackets were long-tailed, with broad, cutaway lapels and outsized silver buttons. Both jackets were dark colored—the larger, chestnut-haired fellow in the bow, who looked to be the older of the two, wore one that was the color of port wine, while the younger, Uromathian-looking one on the midships thwart wore one of a dark, rich green—but the tight trousers were light-colored, and tucked into pointy-toed dress boots which rose to midcalf. All in all, chan Tesh couldn't imagine a less practical outfit for wading around in swamps.
The man sitting in the stern of the boat and managing the simple rudder—at least I know what that's for, chan Tesh thought wryly—was obviously in uniform, although as Loumas had already informed him, it didn't match anything they'd seen yet. There was something about him which suggested a noncommissioned officer, chan Tesh decided, and his red jersey-like tunic reminded the company-captain vaguely of naval uniform, for some reason. Possibly, he thought, because the man seemed to be doing what one might expect a sailor to do.
The boat drifted gently and silently through the reeds in the shallower water, then nosed into the mud with a soft slosh of swamp water and a muddy slurp. Its occupants sat very still, their hands in plain sight. Even the man at the rudder was very careful to make no sudden moves as he released the tiller bar and placed his open hands palm-down on his thighs, and chan Tesh smiled humorlessly at the sight. He'd be doing exactly the same thing if twenty Model 10 rifles and at least one machine-gun (that he could see) was aimed at him.
The older of the two civilians had busy eyes, chan Tesh observed. They swept back and forth across the waiting Sharonians, and the company-captain had the distinct impression that they weren't missing much. Then the moving eyes seemed to narrow slightly as they settled on chan Tesh himself.
"Hello!" the stranger said, in oddly accented but perfectly intelligible Ternathian. "We come talk?"
chan Tesh stiffened. Despite everything, he was shocked to be addressed in his native tongue, and he hoped his astonishment didn't show. Nor was he the only one who reacted strongly. He heard someone inhale sharply behind him, and then someone else snarled in what he obviously thought was a whisper, "Those bastards have a live prisoner!"
The talkative civilian started to stand up in the boat, then froze as half a dozen rifles tracked him. He obviously knew what the weapons were, and he swallowed hard, sweating more heavily than the swampy heat alone could explain. But he didn't panic; chan Tesh had to give him that much.
"No shoot," he said in a commendably level voice. "We talk, please? Much killing mistake. You send word? Say we talk. Important."
"You think they really want to parley, Sir?" chan Dersal said softly behind chan Tesh.
"I'd sooner parley with a fucking cobra!" Platoon-Captain chan Talmarha half-snarled, and the Marine grunted.
"We hit them hard, Morek," chan Dersal pointed out to chan Tesh's mortar commander. "Twice. In their shoes, I'd think about talking truce. Hard."
chan Tesh made a very slight gesture with his right hand, and the two platoon-captains shut up instantly. The company-captain gazed back at the Arcanan in silence for several seconds. Although he'd cut off the conversation behind him, he realized that he found himself favoring chan Talmarha's position. Unfortunately . . .
"Master-Armsman chan Kormai," he said quietly.
"Yes, Sir?" his senior noncommissioned officer replied from behind his right shoulder. Frai chan Kormai was a typical Ternathian, unlike chan Tesh. He was a good foot taller than the company-captain, with shoulders broader than an icebox, and if he carried more than two ounces of excess weight anywhere about his person, chan Tesh had never noticed them. The master-armsman had enlisted in the Imperial Ternathian Army when he was sixteen, and he would be celebrating his forty-sixth birthday in two months. Over those thirty years he'd seen just about everything, and chan Tesh found his unflappable professionalism more comforting than he cared to admit. Especially at this moment.
"I think we need to make certain these . . . gentlemen aren't carrying anything we'd prefer for them not to be carrying, Master-Armsman."
"Understood, Sir." chan Kormai's cool green eyes surveyed the boat. "You want it polite, or thorough, Sir?"
"After what they've already done, I think I can stand it if their feelings get a little bruised, Master Armsman," chan Tesh said dryly. "Let's just try not to leave too many physical bruises, shall we?"
"I think we can handle that, Sir."
"Good." chan Tesh looked back at the man in the boat. "We'll talk," he said, speaking slowly and carefully and wondering how much the other fellow actually understood. "First, though, we're going to take a few precautions."
"'Pre-cautions?'" the civilian repeated, obviously not understanding the word.
"First we search you," chan Tesh told him, and pantomimed slapping his own pockets with his hands. The civilian cocked his head to one side for a moment, then grimaced.
"Understand," he said in less than enthralled tones. "You—" He paused again, obviously trying to find the word he wanted, then used one in his own language. chan Tesh looked politely blank, and the civilian puffed out his cheeks in apparent frustration. Then he twitched his shoulders in an obvious shrug and said something to his companions. chan Tesh recognized the language their prisoners had spoken, but he hadn't had the opportunity to learn to understand it, and so he simply waited until the civilian turned back to him.
"Understand 'precautions,'" he said, speaking the new word carefully.
"Good," chan Tesh said, and nodded to chan Kormai.
The master-armsman had been quietly picking his assistants while the company-ca
ptain explained to the ignorant foreigner. Now he moved forward, followed by four more men. All of them were Marines, chan Tesh noted, and they were also older, more experienced men.
"Get out of the boat," chan Kormai told the talkative civilian, speaking as slowly and carefully as chan Tesh had. "Slowly. Put your hands like this."
He demonstrated lacing his fingers together behind his head, and this time a flash of anger showed in the civilian's eyes. That was fine with chan Tesh. Frankly, he didn't give a damn how angry they got.
The younger civilian said something sharp in their own language, but his superior shook his head. Then, as chan Kormai had instructed him, he stepped slowly and carefully ashore. His boots sank to the ankle in the mud, and he grimaced in obvious distaste as suction tried to pull them off his feet. He managed to reach solider ground without losing them, then put his hands behind his head as chan Kormai had demonstrated.