by David Weber
"I'm sorry to intrude so early, Sir," Janaki chan Calirath said, almost as if he'd read chan Skrithik's mind. "I wouldn't have, if it weren't vital that I speak to you as soon as possible."
"About what?" Chan Skrithik managed to keep the bite out of his tone somehow.
"Sir," Janaki inhaled deeply, "I have to tell you that I've experienced a Glimpse. A major Glimpse."
Chan Skrithik's irritation vanished instantly, snuffed by an arctic wind as he looked into Janaki' gray eyes.
"What sort of Glimpse, Your Highness?" he asked in a totally different voice.
"It's not complete yet, Sir," Janaki said with a grimace of frustration. "To be honest, my Talent isn't as strong as Father's—and it's a lot weaker than my sister Andrin's. It's still coming into focus, and it's going to take a while longer before it comes clear. Or as clear as it's going to come, at any rate. I'm afraid Glimpses aren't quite as cut and dried as a normal Precog."
"I understand that, Your Highness. At the same time," chan Skrithik managed a tight smile, "I don't imagine you'd be telling me about it at this point if you didn't at least have a pretty shrewd notion of where it was headed. And," the regiment-captain's eyes sharpened, "unless it concerned Fort Salby or something else along those lines."
"You're right, Sir. It does—concern Fort Salby, I mean." Janaki's nostrils flared. "I know this is going to sound preposterous, at least at first, but, well, Fort Salby is going to be attacked."
"What?" Despite his total faith in the power of the Calirath Talent, Rof chan Skrithik felt a moment of sheer incredulity. Janaki couldn't be serious! But when he looked into that young face, so much like a younger version of the official portrait of Emperor Zindel hanging in his office, any temptation towards disbelief vanished.
"Attacked by whom, Your Highness?" he asked instead. Then he shook his head in irritation. "That's a stupid question, I suppose, isn't it? Who else could it be?"
"I know it sounds crazy, Sir," Janaki said, "but some of the details I've managed to strain out of the Glimpse might explain how they could get this far up-chain this quickly. Mind you, I don't know how they did it without any sort of warning getting out, but the short version is that they've got something I can only describe as . . . dragons."
"Dragons?" chan Skrithik repeated very carefully, and Janaki snorted a humorless laugh.
"I did mention that I knew it was going to sound crazy," he reminded Fort Salby's commanding officer. "Unfortunately, I don't know what else to call them. They're big—in fact, they're godsdamned huge, from what I've Glimpsed so far—and they fly. Not only that, they breathe fire and . . . other things."
Chan Skrithik sat back in his chair, examining his future emperor's face very carefully. Then he drew a deep breath of his own and pointed at the chair on the other side of the table.
"If you'll forgive me, Your Highness, I haven't eaten yet this morning, and my brain doesn't work very well without its morning infusion of caffeine. Why don't you join me for breakfast and tell me just what in Vothan's name is going on?"
* * *
". . . sometime within the next few days, Company-Captain," Janaki said a couple of hours later. "I wish I could be more specific than that, but that's not the way Glimpses work. Not for me, at any rate. I only know it's coming and that they've somehow kept any advance warning from getting out. And that Petty-Captain chan Darma—" he nodded at the only officer present who was even more junior than he was "—has been unable to raise Fort Mosanik's Voice this morning."
"I see." Company-Captain Vargan frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged. "No one can have everything, Your Highness. The fact that we know they're coming at all is more than we really had any right to expect."
Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik nodded in agreement. He, Vargan, Petty-Captain Kaliya chan Darma, chan Skrithik's assigned Voice, and Sunlord Markan sat in a row of chairs, facing Janaki as he stood in front of a large-scale, detailed topographical map of Fort Salby and the surrounding territory. Janaki felt remarkably like a junior student, called upon to read his latest research paper aloud to a visiting delegation of department heads.
Not all of whom seemed particularly enthralled by his presentation.
"As Company-Captain Vargan says, we are fortunate to know as much as we do," Sunlord Markan agreed after a moment, but the Uromathian cavalry commander's expression was more shuttered than the Shurkhali's. He gazed at Janaki with cool, thoughtful eyes, then cocked his head. "Forgive me . . . Your Highness, but I appear to be somewhat less familiar with the nature of your family's Talent than my colleagues are. Or, perhaps, I should say that I am less familiar with its limitations. May I ask a question or two?"
"Of course, Lord of Horse," Janaki replied.
This entire briefing felt awkward. Partly, that was the inevitable result of the fact that his Glimpse remained less than complete at this point. Partly it was because despite his official separation from PAAF service, he still wore the uniform of the Imperial Ternathian Marines (and would continue to do so until he reached home and formally mustered out), which made him the most junior officer in the room, despite his exalted birth. And partly it was because Markan's ambivalent feelings where he was concerned had been evident from the very beginning. The sunlord seemed inclined towards skepticism, as if he suspected Janaki, as the heir to the throne which Uromathia had never quite managed to best (or equal), of trying to use and manipulate him. Janaki didn't like that last point very much, but there was no use pretending it wasn't true. Or, for that matter, pretending it would have been reasonable to expect any other response out of a senior noble of the Ternathian Empire's greatest rival.
"You say that your Glimpse indicates we will be attacked here shortly," Markan said in excellent, although accented and somewhat overly formal, Ternathian. "I understand that you can not tell us exactly when—not yet, at any rate. But the question in my mind is whether the fact that you have warned us at all will not alter the events you have Glimpsed, and so invalidate the entire Glimpse, in part or in whole?"
"I see what you're asking, Sunlord." Janaki gazed at the Uromathian for a second or two while he considered how best to answer the question.
"First, anything that might be altered would happen . . . downstream from the initial attack itself," he said then. "The Arcanans' decision to attack us, the approach route they're likely to take, the timing of the attack—all of those are governed by circumstances which almost certainly can't and won't be changed by any actions we might take prior to their arrival here in response to my Glimpse. That's not absolutely guaranteed, of course, but it's very, very likely.
"Second, Glimpses are never as clear as straight Precognition. Because they relate to the actions and decisions of human beings, they're more . . . flexible. More 'amorphous,' I suppose. Any Glimpse is in a state of flux right up to the moment the events it concerns actually occur. That's one reason they're sometimes so difficult to interpret or describe to anyone else. Some aspects are very clear, and tend to remain that way. Those are what we think of as the 'core aspects' of a Glimpse. According to the latest theory on how Glimpses work, what someone with my Talent actually Sees is the most likely outcome of human actions and decisions from a potentially huge number of closely parallel universes." He shrugged. "I'm not positive the theory is accurate, but it seems to hold up, and according to it, those 'core aspects' represent the points in a Glimpse at which the decision trees of all those universes flow together most strongly, where the outcomes we See are most statistically likely to occur. The less clear aspects are the ones in which the decision trees have greater numbers of branches, so there's less certainty as to which ones are going to be chosen."
He paused again, watching Markan's face. After a few moments, the Uromathian nodded in understanding, and Janaki continued.
"Up until the moment this attack actually begins, the decision trees are already pretty well set. Oh, it's possible that if we do something in preparation and they find out about it, they might alter their plans as
a result. It's unlikely, though, and I don't expect any pre-attack portions of my Glimpse to change very much. Once the attack does begin, things get more complicated, and at that point what we do to meet the attack is definitely going to affect the possible decisions and actions of our adversaries as they respond to our responses. However, that's where what we refer to as the 'fugue state' of my family's Talent comes into play."
Rof chan Skrithik shifted slightly in his chair. He seemed about to say something, but Janaki gave him the sort of look platoon-captains weren't supposed to give regiment-captains, and the fort's commander kept his mouth firmly shut. He still looked more than a little unhappy, though, and Janaki understood why. Some aspects of the Calirath Talent were carefully not talked about. Including this one.
" 'Fugue state,' Your Highness?" Markan repeated. From his tone, which was no more than politely inquiring, one might have been fooled into thinking he'd failed to notice chan Skrithik's unhappiness, Janaki thought with a wry mental smile.
"No one can deliberately summon or induce a Glimpse, Sunlord. Although my family's obviously been experiencing them for a long time, there are some things about Glimpses no one has ever been able to explain satisfactorily, and we've never been able to make our Talent perform to order, as it were. There are certain sets of circumstances which seem more likely to trigger Glimpses, but no one's ever been able to find a way to do it at will. One thing we do know, though, is that once someone with the Talent experiences a major Glimpse, that person almost always finds himself experiencing a sort of . . . continuous Glimpse if he himself is directly involved in the events as they occur."
Markan's eyes sharpened in sudden, intense speculation, and Janaki smiled again, a bit more tartly.
"That's right, Sunlord," he confirmed. "That's why battlefield Glimpses have served my family so well upon occasion. It doesn't always happen. For that matter, the occasions on which someone finds himself an actual participant in his own Glimpse are rare, to say the very least. But the odds are very good that my own involvement in whatever happens here will trigger the fugue state, in which case I'll be able to predict—probably at least several minutes ahead of time, and possibly quite a bit better than that—how events are going to depart from my original Glimpse."
"With all due respect, Your Highness," chan Skrithik began, "I don't think having you—"
"Regiment-Captain." Janaki's quiet voice cut chan Skrithik off like a knife. Fort Salby's commander looked at him, and Janaki looked back.
"Even with Sunlord Markan's men added to your own, you have fewer than four thousand men," the Crown Prince of Ternathia said, "and you've got better than two thousand civilians to protect right here at Salby. Then there're the TTE work crews out at the railhead."
"And, Your Highness?" chan Skrithik prompted when Janaki paused.
"And you've got at least eight to ten thousand men coming at you, Sir," Janaki said flatly. "With dragons, and those lion-eagle things, and the gods alone know what other 'magic' weapons. If you're going to hold your position and protect the people around you—the Sharonian civilians around you—then you're going to need me right here."
"But—"
"We're not going to argue about this, Regiment-Captain." Janaki looked chan Skrithik straight in the eye. "It's the job of an Imperial Marine to protect civilians. It's the job of any member of the Empire's nobility to protect civilians. And it's the job of a Calirath to protect civilians. Who those civilians are, where they came from, and how many of them there may be is beside the point."
Chan Skrithik looked prepared to go right on arguing, but then he stopped. He gazed at Janaki for several seconds, and Janaki wondered exactly what the regiment-captain was seeing in that moment. In one sense, he was clearly chan Skrithik's subordinate, a junior officer the regiment-captain had every right to order to the rear, if he so chose. But he was also the Crown Prince of Ternathia, the Crown Prince of Sharona, elect. And what he'd just said had been the tradition of the Calirath Dynasty literally for millennia.
It was that long, dusty line of ancestors chan Skrithik saw standing behind him, Janaki decided. There were times when being the heir to the oldest ruling family in the history of mankind had its advantages.
"Granting what you've just said, Your Highness," the regiment-captain said instead of whatever he'd been about to say, "the fact remains that you can't be positive your participation will trigger fugue state. If it doesn't, then having you here would be a pointless, and potentially very expensive, mistake."
"I agree," Janaki replied steadily. "And, as I say, I can't guarantee it will happen. But what I've already Glimpsed includes Seeing myself in fugue state." He really didn't like admitting that bit, but it was the best way to convince chan Skrithik. "That's why I think it's a virtual certainty that it will happen. And the same bits and pieces of Glimpse in which I've Seen that have also shown me that you're going to need me if you hope to hold this position."
Chan Skrithik flinched slightly. Then, slowly and manifestly unhappily, he nodded.
Janaki nodded back, grateful that some of the aspects of the Calirath Talent were so closely held. It would never have done for chan Skrithik to truly understand what Janaki had just told him.
"Assuming that His Highness' Glimpse is indeed accurate," Markan said after a moment, "then it's obvious we must warn higher authority and inform them of what must already have transpired down-chain from here."
"Agreed, Sunlord," chan Skrithik said, glancing at chan Darma. "And we need to warn Olvyr Banchu and the rest of his work crew."
"We need to do more than just warn them, Sir," Vargan said. "There's no way we could pull all of them back to safety in the time we appear to have. To my mind, that suggests we have to send a detachment forward to help defend them."
"But if they are too obviously anticipating attack," Markan pointed out in a completely neutral tone, "and if the Arcanans realize that, then are they not likely to alter the attack plan His Highness has Glimpsed?"
Vargan's expression tightened, but Janaki raised one hand before the company-captain could speak.
"I'm afraid the Sunlord has a valid point, Company-Captain. On the other hand, there are some fragmentary bits and pieces of Glimpse which suggest pretty strongly that the Arcanans aren't planning to attack the railhead itself until after they've dealt with Fort Salby."
"With your permission, Your Highness?" Petty-Captain chan Darma said before Vargan could respond.
"Yes?"
"What you've just said makes a lot of sense, actually."
"It does?" Vargan looked skeptical, and chan Darma shrugged slightly, his expression grim.
"As His Highness has already pointed out, somehow they've kept any hint of warning from reaching us, Sir. They couldn't have done that by accident. That means they have to know about the Voicenet . . . and that they've somehow been eliminating, or at least silencing, the links in the chain as they advance. If that's the case, though, then when they see a labor force as large as the one Engineer Banchu has out there, they're going to have to anticipate that there's a Voice assigned to it. And I doubt very much that they could believe it would be possible to completely take out that many people, that widely dispersed, before the Voice in question got a warning off."
"He's right, Orkam," chan Skrithik said. "They'll probably count on cutting the Voicenet chain here at Salby, or else slipping a raiding force past us to find and take out the next relay station up-chain. But they're not going to want to risk the construction crew's warning us that they're coming before they get here."
"I still think we should beef up their security, Sir," Vargan said after a few moments. "I know most of them already have their personal weapons, and gods know they've got enough heavy equipment to dig themselves in deep. For that matter, a lot of them are veterans. But most of them are still civilians."
"I'd certainly be willing to do that," chan Skrithik agreed. Then he smiled nastily. "Suppose we mount a couple of Yerthaks on flatcars and send them down
to Banchu? We could send along a rifle company to back them up, of course. And what about sending along Platoon-Captain chan Morak, as well?"
Vargan considered the suggestion. Platoon-Captain Harek chan Morak was Company-Captain Meris Nalkhar's senior assistant, and Nalkhar was Fort Salby's senior combat engineer officer.
"I think that would be a very good idea, Sir," he said after a moment.
"Good," chan Skrithik said, then turned his attention back to Janaki. The regiment-captain remained obviously unhappy about the notion of Janaki's remaining at Fort Salby, but he equally obviously knew it was going to happen anyway, which meant it was time to make the best possible use of the resource Janaki represented.
"Very well, Your Highness. What can your Glimpse tell us about their probable attack plan?"
"Well, Regiment-Captain, from what I've Seen so far, they'll open the attack with a strike by those 'dragons' of theirs. They'll come in this way," he turned to trace a line from the Traisum-Karys portal through the mountainous terrain to Fort Salby, "and apparently the range of their . . . breath weapons, for want of a better term, is fairly limited. They have to get in close, so I'd say they're going to go for surprise. Which means . . ."
He went on talking, outlining what he already knew, and even as he spoke, other bits and pieces of Glimpses roiled through the back of his brain like unquiet ghosts.
Be patient, he told those ghosts. Be patient . . . I'll be with you soon enough.
'Chapter Twenty-Six
"Sir! Sir, wake up, please!"
Division-Captain chan Geraith twitched awake. His eyes snapped open, and his right hand reached up and closed on the wrist of the hand which had been gently but insistently shaking his shoulder.
"What?"
He blinked, summoning himself back from the depths of sleep, then sat up quickly, eyes narrowing, as he realized he'd been awakened not by his batman, but by Company-Captain chan Korthal.
"What is it?" he asked his staff Voice more sharply.