by David Weber
"We know their wounded were hurt even more badly than we thought, Sir," Arthag said. "We know they sent at least ten or twelve of their people out aboard whatever the hells it was Nolis Saw down by the creek, and we know it was godsdamned big."
He grimaced. Guided by the Whiffer, some of his scouts had finally found a few footprints, in among the rocks, gravel, and water-washed sand. Whatever the enemy's transport animal had been, it had been huge. And its feet had been unlike anything Hulmok Arthag had ever seen?or imagined?in his life. It must have been actually standing in the stream itself, which explained the dearth of footprints, but the partial ones they'd found in the end had been frightening to behold. Long-toed, with huge claws, and damned near as long as Arthag was tall. Most maddening of all, they couldn't find a single track heading toward the bivouac … or heading away from it, for that matter! It was as if the creature had simply materialized where it was, stood around for a while, and then dematerialized!
"I think Nolis is right that they were getting their most seriously wounded out of here," chan Tesh observed. "Makes sense. But they also sent out the one woman we know was with them, and at least one more civilian, at the same time, and both of them were at least mobile enough to climb up by themselves. So I'd say they were pulling out the people they thought were most valuable, as well as those who were worst hurt. That obviously would have included any of our people who were still alive."
"So what we've really got is just more puzzles," Kinlafia said a bit harshly.
"Any information is always valuable, Voice Kinlafia." An edge of formality frosted chan Tesh's measured reply. Kinlafia looked at him, and the company-captain looked back levelly.
"We know where their encampment is, Darcel," he continued, "and we have it under observation until we can get there and deal with it. In the meantime, any evidence we can get, any information we can cull, may be the one critical piece we need to tell us what to do when we do get there."
Kinlafia looked rebellious for a moment. Then his nostrils flared, and he nodded in unhappy agreement. But it was agreement, chan Tesh noted.
"All right," he said decisively. "I'm going to assume they do have at least one Sharonian prisoner. I may be wrong about that, but they were obviously pulling out someone besides their own wounded. We also know where their entry portal is, and we've got a good notion of how they've dug in on their side of it. I think it's time we took this the rest of the way to them."
Hunger sparkled in Kinlafia's eyes, and chan Tesh felt more than a small flicker of it deep within himself, as well. But he continued in that same, decisive voice.
"Given the size of the only other civilian Parcanthi Saw, I'm also going to operate on the assumption that Voice Nargra-Kolmayr may still be alive. If that's true, then getting her back is our number one priority. Our number two priority, however, is to try to put some sort of lid on this situation before it gets even worse. Much as I'd prefer otherwise, this isn't a punitive expedition. These aren't portal pirates, they aren't claim-jumpers?they aren't anything we've ever encountered before. But they are, clearly, representatives of another trans-universal civilization. So unless they start it, or unless we have convincing evidence that they're holding our people and won't give them up without a fight, I don't want any shooting."
The company-captain could literally taste Kinlafia's disappointment. Arthag and both of the Marine officers seemed just as unhappy, although they were too disciplined to let it show, and chan Tesh allowed himself a small, thin smile.
"I don't want any shooting from our side," he reiterated. "But if it should happen that they start the shooting?for a second time?I intend to be very certain that we end it. Is all of that clearly understood?"
Heads nodded all around, and he nodded back.
"In that case, gentlemen, let's get moving again. I want to be in position to . . . speak to these people before sundown."
Chapter Nineteen
"You be careful out there, Hulmok," Darcel Kinlafia said quietly as Acting Platoon-Captain Arthag swung gracefully back into the saddle.
"Oh, I will be," Arthag said with a smile. Then he clicked gently, and Bright Wind stepped daintily forward.
"Look at him!" Kinlafia muttered to chan Tesh, watching the Arpathian officer's ramrod-straight spine. "I'd be scared to death; he looks like he doesn't have a care in the world!"
"He doesn't," chan Tesh said simply. The Voice turned to stare at him, but chan Tesh, too, was looking after the single horseman riding straight towards their dug-in enemies.
"Hulmok Arthag," the Ternathian officer continued softly. "Fifth son of Sept Chieftain Krithvon Arthag." He glanced at Kinlafia finally. "I've never served with him before, but I know his reputation. And after ten months under Regiment-Captain Velvelig, I've learned a bit about Arpathians, too. They've got so many hells full of demons to worry about, if they've been stupid enough to live the way they shouldn't have, that there's not a thing any mere mortal can do to scare them. And if they have lived the way they ought to, why, there's nothing here that can tempt them to stay on earth, given the rewards waiting for the courageous in the afterworld. Hulmok's less fatalistic about it than a lot of septmen, but it's still in there. Which doesn't mean it takes an ounce less of guts to do what he's about to do.
Hulmok Arthag asked Bright Wind for an easy trot as he moved forward through the trees. The breeze of their passage was just enough to spread the traditional green banner of parley he carried, and he glanced up at it with a wry snort. He didn't expect the enemy to know what a Sharonian parley banner looked like, but it seemed likely that a lone horseman showing up with any banner in his hand was less likely to draw instant fire than a lone horseman without one.
Besides, as Company-Captain chan Tesh had pointed out, if he went out under a parley banner and they shot at him, anyway, there would be absolutely no question about the legal justification for unlimbering everything chan Tesh was prepared to throw at the people on the other side of that portal. When it came to starting a war?or trying to avoid one?such details mattered, and Arthag admired the way chan Tesh's mind operated.
He thought about the careful preparations the company-captain had made, and his lips twitched in an evil grin. He didn't really want a war any more than anyone else did, but that didn't mean he'd be particularly upset if the bastards gave chan Tesh's people an excuse.
He approached the portal and brought Bright Wind down to a dancing walk as he rode through the positions of the carefully hidden Marines. The stallion worried at the bit. The horse was aware of Arthag's battle-ready tension and ready for a fight himself, fretting against the restrained pace to which Arthag held him and so primed for instant combat that sweat darkened his neck.
Arthag saw two sentries on the far side of the portal. They should have seen him already, he thought, but they weren't looking in his direction at the moment. He walked Bright Wind steadily forward, waiting for them to notice him, and grimaced in exasperation as he got within eighty yards of the portal. Admittedly, the thick forest stretched right up to the portal, and chan Tesh's decision to send him in from the west meant the sentries had the blinding light of the afternoon sun shining straight into their eyes, but still … !
Close enough, he thought as the range fell to barely fifty yards, and let out a shrill whistle.
Their heads jerked up as if he'd poked them with a heated poker, and both of them whipped around towards him. They saw him, sitting his horse, just outside the treeline on his side of the portal, and one of them gave a startled shout and started to bring up his crossbow.
"Halt!" Arthag called out sharply, even as Bright wind screamed in warning and lifted his front hooves off the ground. But the second sentry shouted something urgent at his companion, and the man with the weapon aborted the movement and stood frozen in place.
Then others began stirring behind the sentries. Arthag couldn't make out details, since the earthworks which had been thrown up blocked his view, but he had the distinct impression of purposeful
movement. Well, that was to be expected, although the thought that the other side was busy manning its inexplicable?unnatural, he thought, smiling to himself as he used Soral Hilovar's favorite word?artillery didn't exactly fill him with joy.
After several tense moments, someone else turned up. A tall man, whose uniform was subtly different from that of the sentries. The newcomer was an officer, Arthag decided. The uniforms these people wore were too unfamiliar for him to explain why he was sure of that, but he was. And as he watched the other man, he suspected he was looking at the portal camp's commanding officer.
Even from fifty yards away, Arthag could clearly see the surprise?amounting to shock?on the officer's face. The man looked as if he couldn't believe his own eyes, although Arthag couldn't imagine what he found so difficult to accept.
Commander of One Hundred Hadrign Thalmayr stared in disbelief at the single horseman.
He was positive Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak would be funneling forward every reinforcement he could find, and every day Thalmayr remained in possession of the portal was one more day for those reinforcements to reach him. And after almost six days, Thalmayr had concluded that the enemy's total inactivity indicated that the murderous scum who'd massacred so many good Arcanan soldiers hadn't gotten a message out before that blunderer Olderhan managed to kill or capture all of them after all.
He'd never had much use for those over imaginative sorts who fretted themselves into panics over events no one could control. Indeed, he'd always prided himself on his own levelheadedness. Yet he suddenly realized that he'd been allowing himself to become if not complacent, at least … increasingly optimistic. If the other side didn't know what had happened, it might be weeks?even months?before they got around to coming looking, and he'd been settling more and more into the belief that that was what was happening.
The appearance of the man on that golden horse was like taking a bucket of cold water in the face. Not only had "someone" turned up, but one look at the someone in question told Thalmayr it wasn't another civilian.
The hundred swept the trees behind the mounted man through narrow eyes, shading them with his raised hand and cursing the blinding sunlight. The stranger was more than a bit difficult to make out, in his dark tunic and breeches, and Thalmayr was uneasily aware that he couldn't see very much through the light glare. Still, if there'd been more of these people around, surely his people would have seen them! The wood-cutting parties he'd sent out that morning hadn't seen any sign of them, so they couldn't have been here very long … however many of them there might be.
In fact, he thought slowly, it was possible this fellow was all alone. Thalmayr had already decided Olderhan was right about at least one thing; the people he'd encountered had been just as surprised as Olderhan had been. They hadn't expected to run into another trans-universal civilization, either, so there was no reason for their superiors to think that was what had happened to them. But they hadn't been far from their entry portal, either, so even if they hadn't gotten a message back?and there's no fucking way they could have, he told himself?it was possible whoever had sent them out had finally missed them and sent out search parties. And in a virgin universe, those search parties would have been thinking in terms of some sort of accident or natural disaster, not hostile action, so it would have made sense for them to split up their available manpower to cover as much area as possible.
A corner of Thalmayr's mind warned him against grasping at straws, but standing here on top of his parapet dithering wasn't going to accomplish anything, and he started forward.
Arthag watched the enemy officer, wondering what was running through the other man's brain. Whatever else the fellow might be, he didn't seem to be an extraordinarily quick thinker, the Arpathian decided with biting amusement.
But then, finally, the other man started forward, as if he intended to climb down from his earthwork. Arthag didn't want that. He wanted all of these bastards right where he could see them until he was confident they hadn't planned some sort of ambush his own scouts simply hadn't been able to spot.
"Stop!" he called out in a voice trained to carry above the din of battle, lifting his hand in a universal "halt" sign. "Stand right there!"
Thalmayr stopped as the horseman raised his hand. The other man's voice was authoritative, the words harsh and alien-sounding, and the hundred felt his face darken with anger. He didn't much care for the notion of having a single stranger giving him orders in front of his men! Besides, who the devil did this godsdamned fellow think he was, giving orders to an Arcanan officer!
"What do you want?" he barked back, hands on hips. "This portal is Arcanan territory!"
Arthag watched the enemy officer stop where he was. Then the other man shouted something that sounded belligerent. That might simply have been the difference in languages, he reminded himself conscientiously, but there was still something about the other man's body language that rubbed Arthag the wrong way.
"You've attacked my people!" Arthag shouted back, sweeping one arm around to point toward the distant battlefield. "And you've taken prisoners." That was still a shot in the dark, of course, but the other man wouldn't understand a word he was saying anyway. "I want to see Shaylar! Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr!"
Thalmayr twitched. Most of the words the horseman had spouted were only so much more arrogant-sounding gibberish, but not all of them. He shouldn't really have been surprised?if this was a member of a search party, presumably he would have known who he was searching for, after all?but it still took him offguard. Perhaps the name had taken him by surprise simply because it was the only part of the other man's unintelligible speech he'd been able to recognize.
His mind flashed back to the confrontation with Olderhan, the tiny, beautiful woman with the brutally bruised face standing behind the other hundred, and remembered fury whipped through him. It stiffened his shoulders, and his eyes flashed angrily as his head came up.
Arthag's breath hissed as the name struck the other man with visible force.
That bastard knows Shaylar's name! He recognized it!
There was only one possible way for the enemy officer to have recognized Shaylar's name. She'd survived. Survived at least long enough to tell her captors who she was. Whether or not she still lived, though …
Despite the remembered flare of anger, Thalmayr made himself think. The woman?Shaylar?had been the only woman in the other party. No doubt the search parties would be especially concerned about her, so it made sense for this fellow to mention her name. But the fact that he was sitting out here talking strongly suggested he had no notion there'd already been shooting. He seemed far too calm, too unconcerned over his own safety. So if he didn't know?or even strongly suspect?that this Shaylar had been captured, the thing to do was to bluff, play for time. Besides, Thalmayr couldn't have produced the woman even if that was what the other man had demanded.
The hundred composed his expression into one of confusion, then shook his head and raised his hands, shoulder-high and palms uppermost in a pantomime of helpless incomprehension.
"I'm afraid I don't understand a single word you're saying, you stupid bastard!" he called back.
"Wrong answer," Arthag growled under his breath as the other officer shouted back something unintelligible. Then he raised his own voice, louder than before.
"Shaylar! Bring me Shaylar right now!"
Thalmayr's jaw clenched. He still couldn't understand what the other man was saying, but the repeated use of Shaylar's name in what certainly sounded like an increasingly angry tone, worried him. The mounted man wasn't asking general questions, wasn't following the sort of "take me to your leader" approach one might have expected from a first-contact situation. Whatever he was saying, he was being specific?very specific. And he kept using the woman's name.
"I can't understand you!" Thalmayr shouted back. "I don't have any idea what you're talking about!"
Arthag listened not to the words?which wouldn't have meant anything to him, anyway?but to th
e tone, and his eyes were narrower than ever as he studied the other man's body language.
Whatever this bastard's saying, he's lying out his ass, the Arpathian decided. He was fully aware that he knew nothing at all about the other's cultural template, the gestures his people routinely used among themselves. But Arthag's Talent was at work. Like any Talent, it couldn't penetrate the interface of a portal, but after so many years, so much experience of knowing what was behind a gesture, a shift in expression, a change in tone, he was prepared to back his own ability to read the hearts of others across any imaginable cultural divide.
"You're lying!" he shouted. "You know perfectly well who I'm asking for! You bring me Shaylar?Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr?now! I want to see her here?right here!" His left hand pointed at the ground in front of Bright Wind. "Shaylar, now! Or we come in there, kick your cowardly, murdering ass, and pull her out ourselves!"
He knows, Hadrign Thalmayr realized abruptly. He knows what happened!
The other man's anger was painfully obvious, and the jabbing of that accusatory index finger could not be mistaken. He wasn't asking if they'd seen the little bitch; he was demanding that they produce her.
The hundred still couldn't imagine how anyone could have gotten word back, but they obviously had. Yet whatever they'd gotten back must've been garbled, or partial, he thought, his mind whizzing along at dizzying speed.
They know something happened, he told himself, fighting to stay calm, but if they really knew what, they'd've come loaded for dragon, and they wouldn't have started out asking questions. And this bastard's here all by himself … probably.
Thalmayr's brain hurt as all the possibilities and ramifications spun through it. He didn't know that this single cavalryman really was here on his own. It seemed possible, although it was obviously far from certain. But even if he'd brought friends along, they were all still on the far side of the portal. Those shoulder weapons of theirs might be able to punch through the interface, just as arbalest bolts from Thalmayr's own men could, but artillery would be useless, and not even artillery could knock down his fortifications. So unless there were hundreds of the bastards out there in the woods, Thalmayr's positional advantage was still overwhelming.