by David Weber
I need more information, he told himself. And I need to keep the other side guessing as long as possible. And these people's weapons are supposed to be noisy as hell, whereas our arbalests aren't, and he's well within my people's range. So if they have split up their search parties to cover more ground …
The decision made itself. Perhaps, if he hadn't been trying to juggle so many unknowns, so many imponderables, simultaneously, he would have thought it through a bit more clearly, realized just how many optimistic assumptions he was still allowing himself.
But perhaps not, either.
Arthag watched angrily as the other man shook his head again, forcefully. Then the lying bastard made a mistake.
He snarled something low … and the sentries both whipped up their crossbows.
* * *
"All right!" Thalmayr shouted at the other man. "That's enough of this silly shit! You're my prisoner, godsdamn it!"
It was his turn to point at the ground with one hand while the other made a peremptory "get your ass over here!" gesture.
"Get over here now! Or, by all the gods, I'll nail you do that fucking saddle!"
"You must be as crazy as you are stupid," Hulmok Arthag said conversationally, although there was no way in any of the hells the other man could have heard him. Then he raised his voice.
"I don't think so!" he shouted back, his voice firm but calm, and shook his head.
"Fine!" Thalmayr snarled.
The horseman had obviously understood the surrender demand, but he didn't even seem to care. He only sat calmly in the saddle, exactly the way he had been, ignoring the arbalests aimed at him, and Hundred Thalmayr's simmering anger?and uncertainty?turned into pure, distilled fury at his failure to impose his will on the situation. And at that single, arrogant prick sitting out there as if he didn't have a care in the world. As if Hadrign Thalmayr were a threat too insignificant for him even to deign to notice.
"Have it your own way!" he shouted at the other man.
"They've fired on Platoon-Captain Arthag!" Balkar chan Tesh snapped.
He'd been peering through his field glasses from his own position on a tree branch fifteen feet off the ground. Now he raised his head and turned to look at the wiry noncom sitting on the branch above his and hugging the trunk for dear life.
"Instruct Platoon-Captain chan Talmarha and Senior Armsman chan Sairath to open fire!"
"Yes, Sir!" Junior-Armsman chan Synarch replied, grateful for anything to distract him from his fear of heights. He closed his eyes for a brief instant, and one of the small metal dispatch cases he wore at his waist, on what looked for all the world like an outsized cartridge belt, disappeared from its loop. An instant later, a second dispatch case vanished as he Flicked it to Senior Armsman Quelovak chan Sairath on the far side of the portal.
The dispatch cases reappeared almost instantly. chan Talmarha and chan Sairath snatched them up, opened them, and found the written orders chan Tesh had prepared for this very contingency before ever sending Arthag out. chan Talmarha glanced at the order, then turned to his gunners.
"Time to open the ball, boys!" he barked.
Hadrign Thalmayr cursed as the golden horse twisted on its tail and lunged sideways. He'd never imagined an unenhanced animal could move that quickly. Had he been wrong in his original assessment of it?
The question flickered behind his eyes even as both arbalest bolts hissed past its flashing hind quarters. They missed by scant inches as the rider dropped like a stone and vanished behind the horse's side. He simply vanished … but he hadn't hit the ground. He was hanging off the side of his saddle, completely hidden by his mount, as the horse took off like a fiend. It whipped back into the trees, and Thalmayr swore again, viciously, as he saw the rider twist himself back up into the saddle.
Godsdamn it! That's torn it wide open! When that son-of-a-bitch gets home he'll?
The hundred looked up suddenly as he heard a brief, abbreviated fluttering sound.
Balkar chan Tesh had his field glasses back to his eyes. He'd breathed a huge sigh of relief as Arthag thundered safely back into cover, but his attention was on the murderous bastard who'd just tried to have the Arpathian murdered.
That pretty well answers the question of whether or not the first massacre was an accident, doesn't it? chan Tesh thought viciously.
The idiot was still standing there, fully exposed, staring after Arthag, and chan Tesh bared his teeth in contempt.
You're not up against civilians this time you miserable bastard!
The fluttering sound ended in an abrupt, thunderous explosion behind Thalmayr, and the furious hundred's heart seemed to stop.
He'd never heard an explosion quite like it. It wasn't the sizzling, hissing crack of an infantry-dragon's lightning bolt, or even the thunderclap of a fireball. This explosion was … different, somehow. Deeper-throated, more hollow and yet louder. He heard screams of pain, shock, and terror as it erupted well behind the earthworks, and terror smoked through him.
They can shoot through a portal!
Disbelief warred with his terror as he whipped around, staring at the fountain of fire and dirt and the sudden crater at its foot. Even that was wrong! It was as if the explosion had erupted underground, and that was flatly impossible for any artillery spell!
That was his first thought. But then he realized something else, something almost as terrifying as the fact that these people's artillery spell's did work across a portal interface.
That explosion had been behind his parapet. Somehow, they'd projected it through the parapet before it exploded!
"A little long, Sir!" a noncom reported to Platoon-Captain chan Talmarha as he opened the dispatch case which had suddenly appeared and pulled out the hastily scrawled note. "Not much?about thirty yards."
"Down thirty!" chan Talmarha barked, pointing at his number two mortar crew. An instant later, the big weapon gave its distinctive throaty cough and the second ranging shot went whistling off.
Hundred Thalmayr cringed as a second explosion roared. The first had erupted well behind his fortifications, among the neatly arrayed lines of tents. The second exploded right in the heart of his artillery positions, and this time the shrieks were shrill and sharp with agony. Something whined past him, and one of the sentries, still standing beside him, as stunned as he was, went down with a bubbling scream.
Thalmayr turned towards him and realized yet another horror. The impossible artillery explosions clearly weren't as powerful as a field-dragon could have produced, although they were far more powerful than the ones his infantry-dragons could generate. But unlike any infantry or field-dragon Thalmayr had ever heard of, this artillery hurled out some sort of secondary weapon, something that slashed outward from the heart of the explosion to claw down men as much as fifteen or twenty yards away!
"That's got it, Sir!" the noncom reading the incoming dispatches announced jubilantly, and chan Talmarha showed his gunners his teeth.
"Pour it on, boys!" he shouted. "Ten rounds rapid, fire for effect!"
"Take that bastard down!" Platoon-Captain chan Dersal barked as the mortar bombs began to land. He and his men were within less than two hundred yards of the portal. Woodland like this gave all the concealment a skirmish line of Imperial Marines needed, and his people had crept carefully, patiently, into position, waiting for the order.
Now it came, and two hundred yards was no challenge at all to men trained by the Imperial Marines' Pairhys Island firearms instructors.
Something smashed into Hadrign Thalmayr's hips. It slammed him savagely to the ground, with a scream of agony, an instant before the remaining sentry went down without a sound. Even through his anguish, the hundred heard sharp, vicious whip cracks of sound coming from the woods, heard the spiteful hiss of something tiny and invisible sizzling through the air.
He managed to heave himself up onto his elbows, but his body was totally nonresponsive from the hips down, and any movement was agony. He started to shout an order. Even he had
no idea what it was going to be, but it didn't matter. Before he had his mouth fully open, the overture of the first two explosions were replaced by a horrendous crescendo.
Balkar chan Tesh's lips skinned back from his teeth as the heavy mortar bombs exploded. There was nothing to protect the men behind those earthworks from the full fury of chan Talmarha's fire. No bunkers, no overhead cover, not even any slit trenches! The splinter-spewing explosions marched across the enemy position in hobnailed boots of flame and turned the fortifications which had been supposed to protect their occupants into an abattoir.
Thalmayr eyes bulged with horror as he watched the massacre of Charlie Company, Second Andaran Scouts. The "protected" area behind the parapet had become a killing ground, and his men couldn't even see the artillery slaughtering them. It couldn't simply shoot through a portal, or project its effect through solid objects, it was invisible, as well!
But, unfortunately for Charlie Company, its men refused to go down without a fight.
chan Tesh's eyes widened in astonishment as the enemy's infantry swarmed up and over the parapet. They'd already taken hideous casualties?he knew they had?but they came on anyway. Armed only with crossbows, most of them, they charged straight into the face of concealed riflemen. Here and there he saw one of them carrying one of those strange, glittering weapons which spat fireballs, but his Marines had been briefed on those, and deadly accurate rifle fire brought them down.
Then the machine-guns opened up.
The Faraika I was a crank-operated, twin-barreled weapon, firing the same basic .40-caliber round as the Model 10 rifle. The barrels were mounted side-by-side, each with its own breach mechanism. Effectively they were two complete individual rifles, and rotating the crank chambered and fired each of them in rapid alternation.
Firing belted ammunition, the Faraika I had a sustained rate of fire of almost two hundred rounds per minute. It couldn't keep it up indefinitely, of course, without overheating, but there were five of them covering each aspect of the portal.
"No!" Hadrign Thalmayr screamed as an inconceivable avalanche of fire swept over the Scouts. Blood flew in grisly sprays, and his charging men went down as heads and chests exploded under the impossible sledgehammer blows of the enemy's thunder weapons.
It was too terrible to call a massacre.
"Cease-fire! Cease fire!" chan Tesh shouted. "Tairsal, order the mortars to stand down?now!"
The Flicker sent the order as quickly as he could, but the big four-and-a-half-inch projectiles continued to smash down for another several seconds.
The moment they stopped falling, Hulmok Arthag's cavalry, as previously planned, led chan Tesh's own company in a thundering charge through the portal to secure the objective before the enemy could recover.
Hundred Thalmayr watched sickly as at least a hundred mounted men erupted from the forest. They rode straight over his own men, but even in his agony and despair, the hundred realized they were more intent on getting through the portal and into his camp then they were in massacring his troopers. They completely ignored his wounded, and they seemed almost equally willing to ignore the unwounded, as long as no one offered resistance to their passage.
Here and there, one of the Andaran Scouts, carried away by battle rage, or hatred?or duty?did offer resistance. But every one of those charging cavalrymen had one of their deadly hand thunder weapons in his fist, and Thalmayr groaned as still more of his men went down.
The golden stallion which had first ridden out of the woods led all the rest. Its rider put it across the parapet in an effortless, soaring leap, and the rest of the horsemen followed on his heels.
There were still a few dragon gunners on their feet, standing amid the mangled bodies of their fellows. Thalmayr saw one of them swinging his weapon around, saw him actually get a shot off. The fireball enveloped three of the charging cavalry troopers, and he heard someone screaming. But then a crackle of hand-weapon thunder cut down the gunner and his assistant, alike.
Half the cavalry spread out, sweeping along the parapet's inner face. The rest thundered straight ahead, heading for the tents.
Many of the riders flung themselves off their horses, storming into the tents, hand weapons ready, and Thalmayr felt horror grip him by the throat. He still had wounded men in those tents, less-critically injured and yet to be evacuated to the coast. Men unable to defend themselves. What if??
Then a fresh blur of motion caught his eye. Magister Halathyn crashed backwards through the opening of his tent. He staggered, clutching at one visibly wounded arm, then went heavily to his knees on the muddy ground. An enemy trooper exploded out of the tent on his heels, shouting at him, holding one of those ghastly hand weapons and pointing it directly at the aged magister.
Magister Halathyn was gasping out something, pointing frantically towards the east, then jabbing the same hand at the tents full of wounded. The dismounted cavalryman glared at him for an endless instant, still pointing his weapon at the magister's head. Then he lowered it, holding it by his side, and reached out his free hand to help the wounded Halathyn to his feet.
Thalmayr gasped in relief?only to scream in useless denial a heartbeat later as a lightning bolt lashed out from his own parapet. It caught two more of the enemy horsemen … and slammed through them to catch Magister Halathyn and the man helping him to his feet, as well.
They went down, writhing in the actinic glare. Lightning lifted and twisted their bodies, then slammed them down into the mud. They lay hideously still.
"Magister Halathyn! Oh, gods … "
It took Hadrign Thalmayr a moment to realize the voice was his own. And then, finally, the merciful darkness pulled him under.
Chapter Twenty
Jasak Olderhan was torn between impatience to get underway, frustration, fury, and fear.
Otwal Threbuch was overdue. A soldier of his ability and experience should've made the hike to the class seven portal and back to the base camp by now. But his walking wounded had reported back two days ago, according to Hundred Thalmayr's hummer report to Five Hundred Klian, and still there was no sign of Threbuch or Emiyet Borkaz.
That was worrisome. Had Threbuch run into more of Shaylar's people? Even if he had, that didn't necessarily mean anything dire had happened. For one thing, it simply took longer to move without being seen or heard by an enemy than it did to hike through unoccupied territory. And, Jasak reminded himself, he really had no idea how big the portal he'd sent the chief sword to recon might be. If Gadrial and Magister Halathyn were right about it, its sheer size might well have delayed Threbuch?especially given the chief sword's idea of what constituted an adequate reconnaissance. For that matter, Gadrial herself had said her new portal-sniffer was experimental. It could have given a false reading on the portal's size, or on the distance to it.
In short, there were any number of non-disastrous reasons the chief sword might have been delayed. Unfortunately, given what had already happened, Jasak found it difficult to feel optimistic.
The fact that Therman Ulthar and his Third Platoon had been ferried forward by dragon to support Thalmayr's asinine forward defense of Arcana's "sacred soil" only added to Jasak's worry … and anger. The more Jasak considered Thalmayr's stance, the less sense it made even from a tactical perspective. He suspected he wasn't completely alone on that opinion, either. Five Hundred Klian might have decided to support Thalmayr's decision, but unless Jasak was badly mistaken, the five hundred nursed more reservations about it than he was prepared to admit.
At least Klian had sent a request back to Fort Wyvern for reconnaissance gryphons. In a more perfect world, they would already have been moved forward to Fort Rycharn, given the fact that Rycharn was the staging point for the exploration of this universe's only known portal. But, like everything else this far out along the frontier, recon gryphons were in short supply, and Commander of Five Hundred Waysal Grantyl, Fort Wyvern's CO, had only four of them. He'd decided?for reasons best known to himself?that it was more important to retain
them under his own direct control, and he was senior to Klian. It was true enough that the heavy forest on the far side of the swamp portal was exactly the worst sort of terrain for gryphon reconnaissance, which undoubtedly figured in Grantyl's decision, but Jasak prayed nightly that he would relent in the face of Klian's request. Suitable terrain or not, Jasak had men in harm's way.
Of course, he reminded himself bitterly, even if Grantyl did to change his mind, it would take over a week for Klian's request to reach Fort Wyvern and the gryphons to reach Fort Rycharn. And, he reminded himself even more bitterly, they weren't "his" men anymore. Not officially, anyway. That pompous, stiffnecked idiot Thalmayr had made that clear enough. But that didn't mean it was true; it simply meant there was no longer anything Jasak could do to protect them.
He'd had a brief conversation with Fifty Ulthar before the transport dragons moved Third Platoon back to the swamp portal. Military protocol had made it impossible for Jasak to discuss his reservations about Ulthar's new company commander frankly, but he and the fifty had known one another a long time. He was confident Ulthar had read between the lines of what propriety did allow him to say, and the fifty was the late, unlimited Shevan Garlath's antithesis. Jasak was confident Ulthar would do the best anyone in his position could. The problem, of course, was that there wasn't really all that much a platoon commander could do when his company commander had decided to insert his head into his anal orifice.
Jasak stood glowering eastward out the window of his assigned quarters across the beautiful tropical sea as the sun slid toward the western horizon. It should have been a soothing panorama, but at the moment, the softening shadows and the water's turquoise serenity only irritated him further. He hauled out his PC and checked the time, then snorted in mingled amusement and frustration. It would be dinnertime in another half-hour, which would kill at least another hour and a half or so. After which he could probably put his head back into Fort Rycharn's communications center, before he turned in, to see whether or not there'd been any word from Threbuch without seeming too anxiety ridden.