by David Weber
Hell's Gate was thirty-seven miles across, which meant the actual frontage to be patrolled would have been seventy-four miles. Seventy-four miles of rainsoaked, incredibly luxuriant, virgin woodland.
Under the circumstances, all he could realistically hope to do was keep an eye on things, relay messages back and forth between chan Tesh and chan Baskay and the home universe, and keep at least a few of his dragoons available for field service in some sort of emergency.
And I've stripped my own support weapons to the bone sending them forward to help chan Tesh, he reminded himself sourly. Not that he—or chan Tesh—had had a lot of choice about that.
"When are you scheduled for your next transmission up-chain?" he asked Baulwan.
"I'm not, really, Sir," the Voice replied. Halifu arched an eyebrow, and the young Arpathian shrugged slightly. "I'm sorry, Sir. I thought you knew that."
"Son," Halifu said with a crooked smile, "there's been so much crap going on out here ever since we met these people that I'm willing to bet there're at least a dozen things people think I know about that I don't."
"I should have seen to it that this wasn't one of them, Sir," Baulwan said a touch stiffly. "I apologize for failing to do that."
"Why don't you save the apologies for something that deserves them?" Halifu said.
"Thank you, Sir." Baulwan seemed to relax just a bit. In fact, he actually allowed himself a slight smile of his own. "To be honest, Sir, we haven't tried to keep a set schedule because Rokam and I are all alone out here. The rest of the Voices are spread almost as thin as we are, and most of us are trying to get as much rest as we can whenever we don't have to be actively transmitting."
Halifu nodded. Fatigue could become a real problem for anyone who pushed his or her particular Talent too hard. In extreme cases, it could lead to Talent burnout, or even death. And Talent fatigue could be insidious, creeping in without being noticed. Voices were particularly susceptible to it, especially if they worked in one of the major Voicenet transmission junctions.
Or, he thought dryly, if the poor luckless bastards happen to be the only two Voices available out here at the arse-end of nowhere and they're spending all their time transmitting diplomatic notes up and down the chain.
"Erthek Vardan's the next Voice in the chain at the moment," Baulwan went on. "Petty-Captain chan Lyrosk is supposed to be relieving him as senior Voice at Fort Brithik, although I don't think he's arrived yet. Vargan's got pretty good transmission range, but his reception range is a lot shorter, and he's young—younger than I am, I mean, Sir," the youthful Voice said, flushing slightly despite his Arpathian rearing, as Halifu smothered a chuckle.
"I know, I know," the company-captain said after a moment. He patted the Voice on the shoulder apologetically. "I didn't mean to laugh at you, Shansair. It's just that I'm afraid that from where I stand, neither of you is what I'd call particularly ancient."
"I suppose not, Sir." Baulwan grinned a bit sheepishly. That was a good sign, Halifu thought. Maybe he was making some progress with the boy, after all.
"But what I was going to say, Sir," the Voice continued, "is that Erthek's sensitivity is a bit on the low side, and he tires quickly. Traygan and I are only about fifteen miles apart, and he's sensitive enough that he can usually Hear me if I 'shout' loud enough, even if he isn't actively Listening for me. Erthek's almost three hundred miles from here, and he has to settle into at least an upper-stage trance to receive from me, so I can only contact him at times when he's already expecting me to. And, like I said, he tires quickly, too. Early last week, when we had that long transmission from Platoon-Captain chan Baskay, he had to break it into two separate transmissions. So we usually try to conserve his strength. He mounts a Listening watch for me for ten minutes either side of the hour every two hours, and unless an incoming message for us is urgent, he holds it until the next time I contact him instead of his trying to initiate contact with me. Of course, the fact that I spend so much time on the other side of the portal maintaining contact with Traygan is another reason for him to wait for me to make contact. And since this entire leg of the Voicenet's been reserved solely for military traffic—well, military and diplomatic, I suppose—there isn't really all that much traffic, even if the amount we do have tends to cluster in fairly intensive bursts."
"But he's not going to be Listening for you right this minute?"
"No, Sir. Not for another—" Baulwan checked his watch "—ninety minutes or so."
"I see."
Halifu rubbed his chin, gazing thoughtfully through Hell's Gate at the autumn-struck trees on the other side. It was just like the gods, he thought sourly, to dump endless buckets of rain here in New Uromath while the universe on the other side of the portal hadn't seen a drop of rain in almost three weeks.
He really would have preferred for Vardan to be expecting a message from Baulwan at any moment. Unless a Voice's Talent was particularly strong, it was very difficult to attract his attention with an incoming Voice message he wasn't anticipating. It sounded as if it would have been even harder than usual in Vardan's case, and under the circumstances, Grafin Halifu really, really wished he could report Rokam Traygan's missed transmission to Baulwan to his superiors up the chain. There was almost certainly a completely innocent explanation for the Voice's silence, but Halifu would have felt much more comfortable if someone else knew about it.
We don't have enough redundancy in the Voicenet, he told himself sourly. On the other hand, we never designed it for a crisis like this one. And, of course, it doesn't help any that the gods were inconsiderate enough to let this happen clear out at the end of the multiverse, where all Talents are in such short supply.
He'd never truly realized just how fragile the Voicenet was until all hell had broken loose. Now, after Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr's murder and Darcel Kinlafia's departure for Sharona, he was acutely conscious of just how overstretched their communications capability truly was.
"All right, Shansair," he said finally. "We may both be worrying ourselves over nothing, but I'd rather do that than not worry about something I should've worried about. So, as soon as your friend Vardan is likely to be listening for you, I want you to send the word up-chain that we're having trouble contacting Traygan. Unless, of course, we hear from him in the meantime, that is."
"Yes, Sir. I'll see to it."
"Good, Shansair." Halifu patted the youngster on the shoulder again, then turned and started down the steep stairway to the parade ground—and his waiting paperwork—once again.
* * *
Thousand Toralk had discovered something else to worry about.
It was barely thirty air miles from the swamp portal to the huge portal which had been christened Hell's Gate and lent its name to this entire universe. Of course, that was thirty miles of solid, impenetrable treetops, and like most dragon pilots, Toralk was always at least a little uncomfortable about flying over terrain where he and his beast couldn't put down in a hurry, if they had to.
That wasn't what was bothering him at the moment, however. No, what was bothering him was the fact that he'd just spent the better part of fifteen minutes with his entire force circling directly above Fallen Timbers without getting a single response from Narshu or Skirvon.
And I've got better things to do than hang around up here all day admiring the scenery . . . however damned spectacular it may be, he thought sourly, looking north towards Hell's Gate.
That portal was so huge that it was clearly visible at his present altitude, even from here. In fact, it dominated the entire northern horizon. Nor was it alone. Klayrman Toralk and his pilots had a ringside seat for something no human being had ever seen before, for Hell's Gate was a cluster.
The portal detector Magister Halythan had invented had already told them precisely where each of the associated portals was, but at this moment, Toralk scarcely needed it. He could actually see no less than four of them simultaneously—four semi-circular windows, of widely differing sizes, but all of them at least seve
ral miles across and high, opening into four totally separate universes. He saw a midnight-black night sky through one, a dark-green, fecund jungle through another, and an icy snowscape through yet a third. The incredible vistas dominated the horizons, making the incalculable value of this universe starkly plain, yet their very visibility only made the heavy tree cover even more frustrating. He could see all of them, even get dragons through any of them he chose, but he couldn't get the beasts on the ground anywhere in this massively forested wilderness . . . just as he couldn't even see the ground directly below him here!
Still, the visibility looking up ought to be considerably better, and despite the tree cover, Skirvon and Narshu had to know there were dragons overhead. Or they should have, anyway. Even if the canopy was getting in their way, the tangled scar of wind-downed trees where the original clash with the Sharonians had occurred was right next to them. It would never do to land a dragon, and even if Toralk had been able to get one down, he'd never have gotten it back into the air again. But Narshu should have been bright enough to post a lookout out in the middle of it, where the hole torn through the canopy would have allowed him to make visual contact.
We should have brought the gryphons, Toralk told himself irritably. He knew why they hadn't, of course. In fact, it had been his own idea. After all, the total distance to be covered on this leg was only thirty damned miles. How the hells' much reconnaissance capability were they likely to need? And gryphons were . . . problematical, at best, as a strike weapon without very exact pre-attack planning and programming from their handlers. They certainly weren't something anyone wanted to interject into the middle of a possibly confused infantry action!
But if he'd thought about it, he would've realized that he could at least have put a recon gryphon down through the Fallen Timbers opening to confirm what was happening there.
Oh, stop, Klayrman! he told himself. You figured from the get-go that if anything went seriously wrong out here, the entire operation would turn into an utter fiasco. So, either you were going to find Narshu sitting here in control of the position, or else the shit was going to be so deep it really wasn't going to matter. So there actually wasn't much point worrying about sending gryphons in on recon missions, was there?
He glowered down at the treetops for a few more seconds, then shook his head. He couldn't afford to hang around here any longer. Besides, Carthos' unicorns would be here within another hour or so, max, and he had his own mission to complete.
"Take us on!" he ordered his pilot.
"Yes, Sir!"
The command dragon broke out of its holding pattern and headed due north, and hundreds of steadily beating dragon wings followed in its wake.
'Chapter Seven
"Any time now," chan Baskay murmured.
The platoon-captain drew rein and turned in the saddle, gazing back the way they'd come. Not that he'd really expected to see anything.
One of the things Company-Captain chan Tesh had insisted upon was the necessity of finding at least the nearer of the secondary portals in the Hell's Gate cluster. Thanks to Darcel Kinlafia's ability to sense the compass bearings of other portals, he'd at least been able to tell them roughly where to look before he left, and they'd been astonished to discover that there were no less than three more portals within less than sixty miles of Fallen Timbers. Two of them, in fact, were less than fifteen miles from the site of the massacre which had started this entire confrontation. Of those, one connected to what was obviously New Farnal, while the other connected to an open, rolling expanse of grassland—currently covered in the first snow of winter—which could have been the heart of New Ternath or any of a score of other places.
At the moment, the thirty-odd men of what had become Dorzon chan Baskay's command were still about five miles from the New Farnal portal. They'd concentrated on speed, pushing their horses as hard as the terrain permitted, and their trail through the drifts of the forest's bone-dry leaves was painfully obvious.
For now.
Hulmok Arthag's suggestion about how to "conceal" that trail had horrified chan Baskay when he first heard it. Of course, chan Baskay had spent much of his youth on his family's estates in Reyshar. They were located in central Chairifon, in an area of endless forests where the primary local industries all relied on forestry products, and he'd spent most of his boyhood hunting, fishing, and hiking in woods very much like these. That youthful experience had left him with a deep reverence for trees . . . and a matching horror of forest fires.
Arthag, on the other hand, was a son of the steppes. Forests held no special attraction to him, which had undoubtedly made it much easier for him to hit upon the idea in the first place. Once he had, despite chan Baskay's own emotional response to it, the Ternathian had been unable to come up with a logical argument against it.
Except, of course, for insisting that we had to have enough of a head start before he started playing with matches, chan Baskay thought now.
But Arthag had had an answer for that, as well. He and Chief-Armsman chan Hathas had quickly rigged a crude timer using several gallons of kerosene and a candle, and if his estimate of the candle's burning rate was accurate, it should be reaching the kerosene any minute now.
So stop looking over your shoulder and get your attention back where it belongs, chan Baskay scolded himself. The last thing you need to do is hang around back here long enough for the fire to catch up with you!
He snorted, shook his head, and put his mount into a canter to catch up with the rest of the column.
* * *
Toralk's command dragon skimmed just above the treetops as it swept through into the next universe.
With such a huge portal to play with, there was no need for them to make the crossing where anyone in the Sharonian fort could possibly see them. And thanks to the successful scouting mission the Andaran Scouts' chief sword had carried out, they knew precisely where that fort was, and its exact coordinates had been entered into their navigation units.
That was the good news; the low cloudbase was the even better news.
While the cloud cover would make the coordination of his strikes—especially with the air-mobile infantry and cavalry—difficult, it also offered the possibility of additional concealment. He'd covered this possibility in his original mission planning, although the casualties they'd taken in the initial attack had led him to make some fairly substantial adjustments in light of the demonstrated efficacy of the Sharonians' weapons. He wished that he'd had more time to work on those adjustments, but the Air Force had always emphasized an officer's need to think on his feet, and he'd discussed his new attack variants with his strike COs in their hasty conference before leaving the swamp portal behind.
He'd been able to see how heavy the cloud cover was going to be well before he actually crossed the portal's threshold. In fact, the overcast was crowding through the portal into the Hell's Gate universe with the promise of at least some badly needed rain. He'd already fired the sequence of flares to indicate his chosen variant, and now he watched Hundred Geyrsof's strike disappear into the thick overcast ahead of his ponderous transports.
* * *
Shansair Baulwan was still on top of the Fort Shaylar observation tower.
It wasn't as if he had any other pressing duties he had to attend to, and one place was as good as another while he waited until Erthek would be Listening for him. In fact, this was a much better spot than most. He'd heard that Company-Captain Halifu liked to come up here to think about things, and leaning on the rail, looking out across the marvelous view, he could understand why. Like Hulmok Arthag, Baulwan was a child of the steppes, and all of the woods stretching out on either hand would have been bad enough even without the apparently inexhaustible and unending rain. Up here, he could get his head above the treetops, let his mind clear.
He was beginning to think he'd done Halifu a disservice by lumping him with other Uromathians he'd had the misfortune to meet. It was hard to remind himself that Uromathians could be ju
st as different from one another as anyone else, but a Voice ought to be more aware of that than other people. He'd have to make a point of keeping his mind open where Halifu was concerned, he decided.
He straightened up, stretched, and checked his watch again. Fifteen more minutes before Erthek would start Listening.
* * *
Horban Geyrsof had never been more grateful for clouds in his entire life.
No dragon pilot really liked flying through soup this thick, especially in formation. Midair collisions between dragons were almost invariably ugly, particularly if battle dragons were involved. They were always touchy, and they seldom extended the benefit of the doubt to someone who ran into them in flight.
But, after his experiences at the swamp portal, Geyrsof was delighted to take the 3012th and its sister strike, the 4016th, into the clouds. The Dragon-Healers had patched up Graycloud's and Skykill's wing membranes, but both of the remaining yellows were still proddy. They'd not only lost wingmates, but they'd found out that Sharonian weapons hurt. They were going to be much happier if they didn't get shot at again . . . which summed up Geyrsof's own attitude quite nicely, actually.
As for the reduced visibility, all of the 3012th's and 4016th's pilots were experienced formation flyers, and all of them understood the necessity of tightening their intervals and holding their positions relative to one another when visibility fell into the crapper this way. And they were all experienced instrument flyers, too, putting their trust in their navigation units' position and altitude figures rather than trying to rely upon their fallible human senses.
And, best of all, the bastards in that fort aren't going to have enough warning to get their damned heavy weapons into action, he told himself grimly.
He kept one eye on his own nav unit and the other on his single remaining wingman as both strikes crossed over the boundary between the universes well to the east of its objective. Then they turned west, following the preplotted waypoints programmed into their navigation units, until they were sweeping steadily towards the back side of the Sharonian fort.