Fortress Frontier

by Myke Cole

  Bookbinder was silent. He had enough experience with taciturn types like Sharp now to know that was the best way to encourage them to talk. Eventually, Stanley went on. “He reached for my hand, as I fell through the gate. He tried to grab me and missed. He shouted a warning. I think it was an accident. When I see him, I’ll know the right of it. And you’re going to make that happen for me.” He jerked his chin in Bookbinder’s direction.

  Bookbinder nodded. “Happy to help.”

  “So, you going to tell me where we’re going? The base is cut off and surrounded by hostiles. We’re just running?”

  “No,” Bookbinder said. “The Indians have a FOB a few days from here. Dhatri says they have a Portamancer of their own. Without your son, it’s the only way home for us.”

  Stanley shook his head. “I don’t believe this. To think I was nearby not one, but two human outposts out here, and I never knew.”

  “No reason you should. You don’t exactly have GPS.”

  “Or even a map.” He paused. “We’re not heading east, are we?”

  Bookbinder thought about it. “Due north, I think. You’d have to ask Sharp. He’s the one with the built–in compass.”

  “East is tough,” Stanley said. “I struck out in that direction a few times, but it’s not safe.”

  “That’s something coming from you. What’s going on out there?”

  “Monsters. Big, black, horned things. Teeth like knives. I tangled with one once. It almost got me.”

  “You killed it?” Bookbinder asked.

  “I hurt it. At least I think I did. They bleed smoke. They’ve started ranging farther and farther since they got a new queen. I was thinking about pulling stakes anyway for that reason. Cave wouldn’t be safe much longer.”

  “Queen?” Bookbinder asked.

  “I saw her once when I was ranging. Pretty woman. Looks like a human, but don’t you let it fool you. She’s a walking corpse. Those things adore her.”

  Bookbinder frowned. “If there’s another person out there . . .”

  Stanley’s expression hardened. He put a hand on Bookbinder’s forearm. “Leave it, Colonel. You’ve got to trust me on this one. I’ve seen her. She looks like a human. Pretty one, too, but there’s nothing human about her. She’d kill you just as soon as look at you. She’s got nasty, rotting magic. You tangle with her, you die. I nearly did.”

  Bookbinder thought for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

  “Good,” Stanley said. “North sounds right as rain.”

  A few days later, FOB Sarpakavu hove into view in the greatest anticlimax of Bookbinder’s life. No fanfare, no cresting a ridgeline or fording a river to see their prize suddenly before them.

  They just trudged along, exhausted and bored, and there it was.

  The distinction between the Indian Army’s dwellings and the Naga Raja’s palace compound was painfully clear. Bookbinder guessed that the palace and Indian Army encampment around it were easily the same size as FOB Frontier. The palace rose, grand and beautiful, thick white towers arcing gracefully into billowing onion domes topped with brass finials that glinted in the sun. Thick walls, far more businesslike, linked them, sporting rough-looking crenellations and narrow arrow slits. Beautiful scrollwork graced nearly every surface, visible even at a distance. Bookbinder couldn’t make out the details of the intricate carvings from so far away, but he guessed they might depict serpents in some way.

  The Indian FOB sprawled around the outside of the defensive ring wall, a shantytown by comparison; little more than a collection of cheap military tents huddled against the grander stone. A vehicle park was visible below one tower, humvees and tanks side by side. Dots scurried to and fro around them. People, Bookbinder realized, his heart leaping. Real, honest–to–God humans.

  Vasuki-Kai crossed his arms and hissed in satisfaction. “His Highness welcomes you to Sarpakavu Raajbhavan, the home of his lordship Raja Ajathashatru the Fifth. Great King of the World, Uniter of the Spheres.” Dhatri translated. “It is by his will that you are brought here.”

  Bookbinder stood for a long time, trying to soak in the sight.

  “It’s straight out of Kipling.”

  Dhatri frowned. “Hardly.”

  “Sorry,” Bookbinder said. “I didn’t mean anything by that. It’s just . . . it’s very storybook.”

  “Wait until you see the rest of it, sir.” Dhatri’s pride was evident.

  Sharp chucked Bookbinder’s elbow. “Congratulations, sir.”

  Bookbinder looked over at him. Woon and Archer stood beside him, beaming.

  “What are you all smiling at?”

  “You did it, sir.” Woon said. “We’re here. We made it.”

  Bookbinder was so absorbed with the sight that the realization hadn’t yet dawned on him. Now it did, and pride flushed upward through his throat, making his chest swell. “Yes, I suppose we did.”

  “Huah, sir,” Sharp said.

  Bookbinder found himself embarrassed by the praise. Two dead. Besides, what the hell did I really do? Nothing. Just pointed in a direction and made everyone walk. It’s the rest of you who did the work.

  He coughed, nodding. “All right, enough of that crap. We’re here. Now let’s finish the mission.”

  Sharp nodded, gesturing toward the palace. Two nagas approached, Indian soldiers trotting along at their sides. They were smaller than Vasuki-Kai, with fewer heads and arms, their scales only two or three colors against the rainbow that covered him. They carried huge bows, taller than a man. Bookbinder guessed it would take more than one set of hands to draw them.

  The Indian soldiers carried carbines of the same manufacture as Dhatri’s.

  The naga and their Bandhavs prostrated themselves at the sight of Vasuki-Kai, the humans touching their foreheads to the ground and the naga spreading their many heads in a fan across it beside them. Vasuki-Kai acknowledged them with the barest incline of his heads, hissing in greeting. After they rose, the naga hissed back and forth for some time, heads shaking, tongues darting, and hands gesturing at the humans several times. The Indian soldiers clapped Dhatri on the shoulder and spoke with him in Hindi in hushed tones. Their eyes flicked to the Americans several times as they spoke, and Dhatri seemed to be placating them, patting the air with his palms.

  We’re not supposed to be here, Bookbinder thought.

  At last, the naga gestured to the Americans to follow, and the group fell in at the rear of a procession that made its way toward the Indian military-tent encampment, Vasuki-Kai at the head.

  After living on MREs for so long, Bookbinder salivated as the smell of fresh-cooking food wafted toward him. Familiar sounds began to reach him; the grumbling of internal-combustion engines, the dull thrumming of generators. Industrial sounds, human sounds. Normality. He had to stop himself from running toward them.

  Sharp began to frown as they went. He punched Stanley’s shoulder and pointed ahead of them. Bookbinder followed his line of sight to the ground around the human encampment. He blinked. Then blinked again. The ground was writhing.

  Snakes. Snakes of such variety they boggled the mind. Long and short, thick and fat, all the colors of the rainbow. Striped, spotted, monocolored. Bookbinder spotted some with horns, some with tiny, vestigial wings. A few had heads at both ends of their long, sinuous bodies. They were draped over every surface.

  They cavorted on top of the humvees and slithered around the bases of the tent poles. Bookbinder looked up at the palace ring wall to see them sunning themselves in the arrow slits and sliding atop the crenellations. He stifled a shudder, already guessing what the naga’s attitude toward their lesser cousins might be. The Indians were stepping gingerly as they went, careful to move around them.

  “Ugh,” Woon breathed. “Sir . . .”

  “Major,” Bookbinder said, his tone low and commanding, “I don’t care if fear of snakes is the greatest phobia you’ve ever had. You will get over it right now. Do you understand me?”

  Woon swallowed, gr
imacing. “Yes, sir.”

  As if on cue, Vasuki-Kai stopped, scooping up a double handful of the creatures, letting them move across his arms. He hissed gently to them, twining his heads against theirs, before setting them down again. Dhatri smiled. “It’s good to be home.”

  Sharp reached down and touched one of the flat rocks that littered the ground at regular intervals. “It’s warm, sir,” he said, looking up. “Pyromantically heated, I’d guess. Unless they’ve got some system under the ground.”

  Bookbinder nodded. “For the snakes. They’re cold-blooded.”

  Sharp nodded, standing. A ring of Indian soldiers and naga had formed around the group. Bookbinder noted that the parapet walk on the ring wall was beginning to fill up with naga though he didn’t see any humans there.

  The naga and humans prostrated themselves before Vasuki-Kai, who began to speak before they rose. Dhatri translated into Hindi, briefly pausing to salute as an officer joined the circle of onlookers, the dark green epaulets on his khaki uniform showing three gold suns.

  At last, the naga and humans bowed together. The officer came forward and saluted Bookbinder. “Sir, I am Captain Ghaisas,” he said in English so heavily accented Bookbinder could barely follow him. “I am honoring to having you in our base.”

  Bookbinder returned the salute. “Many thanks for having us, Captain. I can’t begin to tell you how happy we are to be here.”

  Dhatri turned to Bookbinder. “Sir, His Highness has directed that you be lodged in one of the Raja’s guesthouses. This is a great honor. You will be hosted inside the palace walls, where very few humans ever go. You can rest after your long journey.”

  “I appreciate that,” Bookbinder said. “But we’re plenty rested, and the FOB doesn’t have a lot of time. Please inform His Highness that we need to connect with your Portamancer as soon as possible.”

  Vasuki-Kai had already begun hissing a response before Bookbinder finished speaking. Dhatri patted the air again. “Sir, please understand that the Raja does things in his own way. For now, you must go to the guesthouse and refresh yourself. I have to make my reports here.”

  Bookbinder opened his mouth to respond, then thought better of it. Dhatri had been clear. He was in foreign territory that he wasn’t even supposed to know existed. Better not to push it.

  “Please thank His Highness. We’re honored to stay wherever he is willing to house us.”

  Vasuki-Kai nodded, and the procession moved on, careful to avoid the scattering of snakes at their feet. As they moved through the encampment, Bookbinder marveled at its sparseness.

  There were no sandbags, no barricade walls, no permanent structures. The soldiers looked cheerful enough, the encampment had the air of a street fair, with men cooking food on open grills, some in their undershirts playing cricket on a stretch of open field. Unlike the American FOB, there were no women at all. All stopped and stared as the Americans moved past. Bookbinder quickly abandoned any hope that, Portamancer or no, the Indians could come to FOB Frontier’s aid. They were far too few, and Bookbinder counted only a handful of helicopters.

  They approached a giant set of arched wooden doors, banded with scrolled iron. The iron and the rich, dark surface of the wood were decorated with intricate patterns of snakes and naga cavorting together. Bookbinder spied what he thought might be battle scenes and a couple of images of naga embracing humans, clutching them protectively to their chests.

  The doors creaked open, and they moved into an enormous paved courtyard crowded with naga. A few of them were as large and colorful as Vasuki-Kai, but the majority were the smaller, plainer variety. A very few Indian officers dotted the throng, high-ranking to judge by the gold piping on their dress uniforms and the richness of their epaulets. Towers soared all around them, as thick at their base as apartment buildings, forcing Bookbinder to crane his neck. The whiteness of the stone was nearly blinding, and the magical heat rising from it made him sweat under his gear despite the encroaching winter.

  Vasuki-Kai turned and motioned. A dozen smaller naga formed a tight column around the Americans and herded them along the inside of the ring wall. Vasuki-Kai stood and watched, and Dhatri saluted Bookbinder as they were separated. Bookbinder felt an anxious pang at being separated from the only friends he had in this strange place but let himself be herded along with what remained of his team. The naga marched them along for a full kilometer before the paved ground gave way to packed earth and frostbitten grass, rising to a white stone pavilion that sat at the base of one of the enormous towers. Its sloped roof was supported by eight carved columns, their capitals carved in the likeness of clustered snake’s heads, fanned out to look in all directions. Open on all sides, Bookbinder could make out several bed-sized white stone slabs within, carved with broad grooves. He spied a white stone pool just outside the pavilion, maybe six feet across, with a brass fountain in the middle, spouting clear, sparkling water.

  The naga motioned them inside, then arranged themselves to form a ring around the pavilion, backs to the humans, most of their heads looking inward. They froze in that position, eerily silent. The pavilion floor was heated, the grooved slabs even hotter.

  Here, as everywhere, snakes basked in abundance. The place was uncomfortably hard, but at least they wouldn’t be cold, despite the lack of walls. He looked up at the backs of the silent, immobile naga. “Well, I guess we’re not going anywhere. Best get comfortable.”

  They grounded their packs and weapons, took off their helmets and body armor gratefully, then laid out their bedrolls and sleeping bags to try to provide some padding against the hard stone, careful to avoid the snakes who lounged about them.

  When Bookbinder made his way out to the fountain to wash himself and drink, one of the naga guards silently detached itself from the ring and joined him.

  He glanced up at it. “You speak English, by any chance?”

  It ignored him. He took a tentative step past the fountain in the direction of the tower. The naga hissed a warning, one of its heads jerking firmly in the direction of the pavilion. “All right, all right,” Bookbinder said. “I’ve got it.”

  When they were all cleaned and had drunk their fill, they lay on their bedrolls, waiting. Before long, Bookbinder fell asleep despite the hard surface of the stone beneath him and the nearness of the many snakes.

  Woon sprawled against one of the stone slabs, snoring with her mouth open. An enormous black snake had crawled into her lap and lay half-draped across her pack beside her. Bookbinder shuddered to think what Woon would do if she awoke to find it there. He rose to his knees and slid toward her, reaching for the animal.

  Dozens of the naga guards’ heads followed his movements, tongues rapidly flickering through the air.

  Bookbinder sighed and backed off. Maybe they wouldn’t mind if he handled one of the snakes. Maybe they would. Best not to risk it. Woon was an air force officer. She’d have to find a way to deal with it.

  They lay, resting and waiting, until darkness began to fall.

  Archer and Sharp rested at the other end of the pavilion, keeping their own counsel. Woon was thankfully snake-free when she finally awoke and joined Stanley and Bookbinder. “Guessing we’re going to be here a while, huh, sir?”

  “Guess so,” he said.

  “Anybody got a deck of cards?”

  Nobody did.

  Shortly afterward, two Indians approached, accompanied by a naga guard. They brought two large woven baskets full of food. The first appeared to be a rifleman, his uniform marked with a single chevron, but the second was an officer, wearing epaulets marked with two golden suns. The naga parted to let them pass, and they set the baskets on the pavilion’s stone floor.

  Bookbinder stood and returned the officer’s salute, eyeing the baskets hungrily. They were piled with piles of flat, fresh-baked bread, dishes full of creamed vegetables and thick sauces, skewers of savory meat. His mouth began to water from the smell.

  The officer said. “I am hoping you will enjoy this food. Y
ou are well?”

  “We’re all fine, thanks, and I’m sure we will.” He spoke quickly as the officer turned to go, hurrying. “We’ve been sitting here all day. We really need to get moving. We need to speak to . . .” The Naga Raja? Wasn’t he a king? “. . . um, whoever is in charge. Your commander. We have a crisis back at our base. That’s why we came here.” He tried to keep his tone neutral, patient. It proved very difficult.

  The officer froze. “I am asking you to please be patient. We are . . . having talks. Please enjoy the food.” He motioned to his man, and they hurried away, their naga escorts keeping up easily.

  Two hours later, as full darkness began to cloak the pavilion, Bookbinder found himself pacing the perimeter. He’d made two more attempts to leave the immediate area, both rebuffed by the naga guards that surrounded them. He heard sounds of human activity from all around the palace compound, and even shouts, laughter, and barked orders from the Indian human encampment on the other side of the ring wall. Once, he heard the throaty rhythmic thumping of helicopter rotors.

  This was getting ridiculous. He turned to one of the naga guards. “We have got to get moving! My people are in trouble. They need our help. We can’t just sit here while you negotiate! We need help, now!”

  The only indicator that it heard was a slight shifting of the few heads that regarded him. Sharp touched his elbow. “Sir, don’t make yourself crazy. These guys are going to move at their own pace. I ran with the Yemenis for a while, and it was like this. No sense in pushing it. It won’t help, and you’ll just piss them off.”

  Bookbinder swallowed his anger with some difficulty. Sharp lost two men on your watch. He’s never said a word about it to you. Show him a little fucking patience.

  “All right,” Bookbinder said, biting down on the words. “But, damn it! Every second counts here! We wait too long and the post gets overrun and then what the fuck did we come here for in the first place?” What did your men die for? Bookbinder tamped down on his magic with a will and steadied his shaking hands.

  Sharp only looked at him calmly. “I get it, sir. But this isn’t something we can do anything about right now. You just have to chill.”