by David Weber
* * *
Commander of One Thousand Klayrman Toralk was not a happy man.
In one sense, the operation had gone exactly as planned. They'd obviously taken the portal defenders completely by surprise, which meant Narshu must have succeeded in neutralizing the Voice at Fallen Timbers. And the force here at the portal had been almost totally eliminated. At the moment, they had exactly twelve prisoners, half of them wounded, and it didn't look as if there were going to be very many more.
But the attack had cost him. Graholis, but it had cost him! Bad enough to have had two of his reds killed outright, but he had three more which had suffered significant injuries. The odds were probably about even that they'd still lose Berhala's Skyfire, even with the healers, and one of the other wounded reds was hurt almost as badly. That was a much higher loss rate than he'd anticipated, and it suggested that these Sharonians' "rifles" were going to be dangerously effective against his ground attack dragons.
Yet as bad as that was, there was worse. He had no idea what the Sharonians called the things they'd screwed onto the ends of their rifles, but one of them had gone straight into Nairdag Yorhan's Windslasher's open mouth. The explosion had killed the yellow, and Yorhan's neck had snapped like a twig when his dragon went in at two hundred miles an hour.
It was obvious to Toralk that the yellows had been his most effective weapon, and at least they'd demonstrated a relative immunity to rifle fire. Graycloud and Skykill both had wing damage, but punctured membranes were something the Dragon-Healers could repair quickly. Both of them had dozens of scarred and gouged belly scales, as well, but none of the fire they'd taken there had managed to penetrate, and he expected the healers to have both yellows back in the air within another half-hour, maximum.
Which made the fact that he'd lost a third of them even more painful. If taking a single portal had cost this much, then—
The sound of a sudden explosion snapped his head up, and his mouth tightened as he heard the fresh screams.
That bastard Neshok, the thousand thought viciously. Why the hells didn't he warn us about this crap, if he's so frgging good?
Even as the thought flashed through his brain, he knew it wasn't really fair. The truth was that most of the information Neshok had provided had proven amazingly accurate, but Toralk wasn't really in a mood to be fair to the arrogant Intelligence officer. Not when he'd already lost so many battle dragons. And not when one of the things Neshok hadn't warned him about had already cost Arcana at least twenty men.
He didn't know what the Sharonians called the devilish devices they'd buried around their defensive positions. He didn't even know—yet—how they worked, for that matter. But their effectiveness had already been made amply clear, and he expected them to have a significantly dampening effect on the ground troops' confidence.
Maybe not, he thought. I may be being overly pessimistic. It's not that much different from a combat trap spell, after all.
He watched the corpsmen making their quick yet cautious way towards the newest casualties and knew that there was, indeed, at least one very significant difference. The devices killing his men as they exploded were completely undetectable by any of the Army's trap-sweeping spells. They simply didn't register, since they didn't rely on any arcane technology at all, and that was the reason for the hesitancy he could already see in the gas-masked troops advancing cautiously through the Sharonian positions.
"Sir," one of his staffers said quietly. Toralk glanced at him, and the young man twitched one hand unobtrusively back over the swamp. Toralk followed the gesture with his eyes, and his lips tightened slightly as he saw Two Thousand Harshu's command dragon slicing down towards a landing.
He nodded his thanks to the young fifty and turned to walk back towards the safe zone on the swamp side of the portal where they were sure there were none of the whatever-the-hells-were-blowing-people-up to greet his superior officer.
The dragon landed in a spray of water and muck, and Harshu vaulted down from its back. He landed with a substantial splash, but he seemed completely unaware of it as he started for the shore, grinning fiercely around the stem of the pipe clenched between his teeth.
Somehow, Toralk wasn't surprised. The two thousand had always struck him as someone who was enamored of flamboyance for flamboyance's own sake. Someone who was constantly aware that he was "on stage" and played shamelessly to his audience. Over the past few weeks, though, Toralk had come to the conclusion that he'd been wronging Harshu, at least a little. The two thousand was constantly on stage, and constantly aware of it, but it was a sort of military theater which was part and parcel of his command style. And, somewhat to Toralk's surprise, it actually worked. Even with relatively senior officers—like one Thousand Klayrman Toralk, who damned well ought to know better.
Commander of One Thousand Tayrgal Carthos followed the two thousand down into the mud. The heavily built, red-haired Carthos was Harshu's senior infantry commander, Toralk's counterpart amongst the expeditionary force's ground pounders. He was also older than either Harshu or Toralk, with streaks of startling white painting themselves into his thick, spade-shaped beard to bracket the corners of his mouth, and his expression seemed to hover on the precipice of a perpetual frown. Now he and Harshu waded through the thigh-deep swamp to the solid hillock upon which the portal stood, then stepped through onto the firmer ground on the other side.
"Sir!" Toralk saluted briskly, and Harshu touched his own fist to his left shoulder in response.
"Before you say anything, Klayrman," the two thousand said around his pipe, "you and your people did well—very well. I know we've lost more dragons than we'd anticipated. Well," he grimaced, "that's not totally unexpected, is it? We knew going in that the first battle would be a learning experience."
"Yes, Sir. But I still—"
"Don't kick yourself over it." Harshu's voice was just a bit harsher, and he shook his head. "I said you did well, and you did. I was watching over the scrying spell. I know exactly what happened, and I know Hundred Geyrsof made the right call. I don't know just what they used to knock that one yellow down, but whatever it was, it was short ranged. And whatever else happened, we've got the portal."
"Yes, Sir," Toralk acknowledged, then showed his own teeth in what very few people would have mistaken for a smile. "On the other hand, these people seem to have left us a few rather nasty little surprises." He shook his head. "I know I'm just an Air Force puke, but it looks to me like these trap-spell equivalents, or whatever they are, are going to be a major pain in the arse."
"At least until we get a handle on finding them, at any rate," Harshu agreed, gazing past Toralk to where his infantry pointmen continued to pick their way gingerly and cautiously forward.
"I don't suppose we can blame the men for being a little hesitant," Carthos put in,"even if it is putting us behind schedule."
Toralk nodded. The cavalry was supposed to have been moving ahead, sweeping towards Fallen Timbers to relieve Narshu. The infernal devices the Sharonians had left behind, however, had put a significant kink into their timetable.
"I agree," he said. Under the Union of Arcana's joint forces doctrine, he and Carthos were currently in a sort of gray zone. Air-mobile operations technically came under Air Force control, but only until the ground forces were landed. At that point, control reverted to the senior Army officer present. Technically, that was Two Thousand Harshu as the expeditionary force's commanding officer, but Carthos was the designated tactical officer in command for the ground component. Which meant that Toralk was in a rather delicate position if he said anything that sounded like Air Force criticism of Army personnel.
"Part of it may be that we've . . . over impressed our junior officers with the need to conserve manpower," he observed.
"Maybe," Harshu said. "But it's a hells of a lot more likely that the fact that they can't detect the bloody things is giving them the willies!"
The two thousand stood for a moment, clearly thinking hard, then shrugged.
"Narshu obviously pulled off his primary mission," he said. "If he hadn't, these people would have been a lot readier for us. So, he most likely has control at Fallen Timbers. We still need to get someone up there to link up with him and confirm that he and Master Skirvon have the situation in hand, but it's more critical that we take the Class Eight and take out their portal fort. And any 'Voices' they have stationed there."
"Yes, Sir."
"All right, then." The two thousand turned to Carthos. "We'll leave one of your light cav companies and your engineer battalion here. As soon as the engineers manage to clear enough of these booby traps of theirs, we'll put the cavalry through and send it up the trail to Fallen Timbers. In the meantime," he glanced back at Toralk, "we'll push ahead to the Class Eight with the dragons and the rest of the air-mobile forces. We can't be positive they didn't have patrols or fatigue parties out somewhere, but if we close the Class Eight behind them, they aren't going anywhere, anyway."
"Yes, Sir," Toralk said, and Carthos nodded.
"Understood, Two Thousand," he said.
There wasn't much else he could have said, under the circumstances, but Toralk listened carefully to how he said it. If this entire operation was going to succeed, it would be solely because of the mobility and reach his dragons afforded. Which meant it wouldn't happen if interservice rivalry got in the way. He wouldn't say that Carthos sounded happy about the reminder that the Air Force had to be the senior service for this particular mission, but he didn't detect any overt resentment in the other thousand's tone or expression.
"Then let's get your dragons back in the air as soon as you can, Thousand," Harshu said, and slapped Toralk on the shoulder. "And remember this, Klayrman. The lessons you've learned here this morning may have been painful, but they still give you the advantage, because whoever's in command of that portal fort hasn't had any lessons at all yet. Now go change that."
'Chapter Six
"Excuse me, Sir."
Company-Captain Grafin Halifu, commanding officer of the portal fort which had been named in memory of the murdered Voice Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr, looked up from the paperwork on his desk with an undeniable expression of relief as Junior-Armsman Farzak Partha rapped on the frame of his office door. Halifu had never been one of those officers who was particularly good with paperwork. He was conscientious about it, but he managed to get through it only by sheer, dogged persistence. In fact, it was the one part of his chosen profession that he genuinely hated. And the situation had gotten significantly worse after those Arcanan lunatics massacred Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl's survey party. There was more of it, for one thing, and Halifu was prepared to swear it was getting increasingly trivial, as well. This morning's chore, for example, included trying to track down three cavalry mounts which appeared to have evaporated into thin air.
Not that the air's particularly thin around here, Halifu thought grumpily as he glanced out his office window. At least nothing was actively falling out of the sky at the moment. In fact, they'd had the better part of thirty-six hours without any rain at all, but from the look of the low, dark clouds, their record wasn't going to get a lot longer.
"What is it, Farzak?" he asked, resolutely turning his back on the charcoal sky.
"Petty-Captain Baulwan would like to see you for a moment if, of course—" Partha had been Halifu's senior clerk for almost a year now, and his eyes gleamed as he allowed them to drop for a moment to the sheafs of paper spread across the company-captain's desk "—you can spare the time away from your paperwork, Sir."
"Away from my paperwork, is it?" Halifu tipped back his chair and grinned at Partha. "I'll 'paperwork' you in a minute, Farzak! In fact," his eyes narrowed and his grin grew broader, "I've got a little chore for you. It seems that three of our horses have mysteriously disappeared. Why don't you go ahead and show Petty-Captain Baulwan in, and then take this report—" he picked up the offending sheets of paper and handed them over "—and trot right over to the stables and find out where these three miserable nags are."
"Of course, Sir," Partha replied, and somehow he managed to simultaneously maintain proper military decorum, radiate an air of martyrdom, and make it perfectly obvious that such a routine task was well within the limits of his capabilities, whatever might have been the case for his superior.
Halifu snorted in amusement and handed over the report, then watched Partha depart. The door opened again, a moment later, and Shansair Baulwan stepped through it.
"Good morning, Sir." The petty-captain came to attention and saluted.
"Good morning, Shansair," Halifu replied, returning the salute just a bit less crisply.
Baulwan had been on-post for only a bit over three weeks, and it was clear to Halifu that the Voice still didn't feel totally comfortable with him. In fact, he suspected Baulwan was taking refuge in military formalities precisely because he wasn't comfortable with Halifu. It was, unfortunately, an attitude to which Halifu had become unhappily accustomed when dealing with officers from Eastern Arpathia. Halifu himself was a Uromathian, and Uromathia—especially, Halifu was forced to admit, under its current emperor—hadn't proved a particularly friendly neighbor for Arpathia in general.
Halifu didn't like it when he ran into an Arpathian who was prepared to dislike him simply because of where he'd been born. He couldn't really blame them, though, and he had to admit that when he finally got through to one of them and convinced them to separate him from the Uromathian stereotype, he felt an undeniable glow of pleasure.
It's too bad Hulmok is forward-deployed, the company-captain thought. He'd probably be a big help getting Baulwan over the hump.
"What can I do for you this morning, Shansair?" he asked aloud.
"I'm just a little concerned, Sir," the Arpathian Voice said. "I haven't heard anything from Petty-Captain Traygan this morning."
"Well, it's fairly early yet," Halifu pointed out. In fact, it wasn't quite ten a.m.
"Yes, Sir, it is. But it's not that early at Fallen Timbers," Baulwan pointed out in return, and Halifu nodded. In fact, Fallen Timbers was three hours east of Fort Shaylar (and, of course, in a totally different universe), which meant it was almost one in the afternoon there. "They should have broken for lunch by now, Sir," the Voice continued, "and that's when Rokam—I mean, Petty-Captain Traygan—usually sends me a synopsis of the morning's negotiations."
"Maybe they're just running a little later than usual," Halifu suggested.
"That certainly possible, Sir. But when that's happened before, he's at least dropped me a short Voice transmission to let me know about the delay. After all, he knows I'm camped out on the Hell's Gate side of the portal, waiting, whenever I expect to hear from him and he's usually careful about not leaving me hanging around when there's not going to be any Voice traffic to receive after all."
Halifu frowned. Put that way, Traygan's failure to check in with Baulwan did sound a bit peculiar. In fact, his frown deepened, when he put that failure together with the message chan Baskay had transmitted up-chain about Arthag's suspicions, it became more than just peculiar.
He looked back up at Baulwan and saw the same thought in the youthful Voice's eyes. Of course, Baulwan was the one who'd relayed that very message to Halifu. Not only that, but Arthag was also an Arpathian, and one with a steadily growing reputation among his fellow countrymen. Clearly, Baulwan, at least, had taken his and chan Baskay's warning to heart.
"I understand your concern, Shansair," the company-captain said after a moment. "In fact, now that I've had a chance to think about it, you're starting to make me a bit nervous, too." He smiled tightly at the Voice. "On the other hand, we're probably both a little extra jumpy just now."
"I thought about that, Sir." Baulwan seemed to relax a little at Halifu's reaction. "That's why I tried to contact him when he didn't come through on schedule. I didn't get any response, Sir."
"I see."
Halifu grimaced and climbed out of his chair.
"Come with me," he said, and l
ed the way out of his office and across Fort Shaylar's muddy parade ground. He always thought better in the open, and he needed to carefully consider what Baulwan had told him.
"Have you ever had trouble getting through to him before when you initiated the contact?" he asked the Voice as Baulwan walked a respectful half-pace behind him and to his right.
"Honestly, Sir?" The Arpathian shrugged. "I did have trouble making contact a couple of times. Once, he was asleep, and it took me at least half a dozen contact attempts to wake him up. The other time, he was concentrating on something else and it took him a while to Hear me. But both of those were unscheduled contacts. This time around, he should have been expecting to Hear something from me, I'd think, since I hadn't Heard anything from him."
"I see," Halifu repeated.
They reached the foot of the tall, steep, ladderlike stair that zigzagged up to the top of the fort's observation tower, and the company-captain started up it, with Baulwan following. It was a stiff climb, which Halifu made it a point to make at least three times a day on the premise that whatever didn't kill him would help maintain his current belt size, and he was slightly amused, despite his growing concern, as the considerably younger Voice began to puff before they were two-thirds of the way up.
They topped out, and Halifu crossed to the sturdy, split-log railing around the observation platform and leaned forward, resting his elbows and forearms on it as he gazed out through the stupendous portal in front of him.
It'd take a dozen damned forts this size to really cover this portal, he thought, for far from the first time. No one had ever seen a portal this size before, and their wasn't any real point in pretending Fort Shaylar was anything more than an administrative center. Technically, he was supposed to have enough manpower to let him send out patrols to cover the entire face of the portal for which he was responsible. Actually, he wouldn't have had enough men for that even if none of his assigned strength had been sent forward to chan Tesh.