"So, if you're not a soldier, why are you hiding out here?"
"Why?" This time Kersai let a little incredulity into his tone. "You've invaded us. As far as I can see, it only makes sense to stay out of your way."
* * *
Kalcyr had to admit the other man had a point. In fact, he had a better point then he knew.
One of the troopers behind him stirred uneasily. Kalcyr sensed the motion and turned his head to give the offender a savage glare, and the man froze.
Lily-livered bastard, Kalcyr thought. Probably one of those pricks who stays up at night moaning over the Kerellian Accords. These bastards started the massacring, and Five Hundred Neshok's right about taking chances with these 'Talents' of theirs.
"So, 'civilian,' " he said. "What's your name?"
* * *
Kersai looked up at the cavalry commander. The Arcanan wasn't looking back at him; instead, his attention appeared to be focused on the crystal in his hand, and Kersai's eyes narrowed as he remembered what Syrail had told him about chan Tergis' last transmission. About the crystal which had flashed blue like some sort of inanimate Sifter.
"Syrail," he said quietly—and truthfully. "Syrail Targal."
* * *
Kalcyr grunted in satisfaction as the verifier spell in the PC blinked with blue confirmation. The Sharonian looked older than he'd expected, but then again, the man who'd given the name to Five Hundred Neshok probably hadn't been in the best possible condition when he'd done so. Besides, nobody at the fort, except for the military Voice assigned to it, had ever actually met this Syrail, as far as anyone knew.
"Stand where you are," he commanded, then nodded to two of his men.
"Take a look," he said.
The selected troopers climbed down, passing their reins to one of their fellows, and advanced on the Sharonian. The PC had translated Kalcyr's order to them into Sharonian, as well, and the civilian obviously knew what was coming. He made no effort to resist, although Kalcyr's men were no gentler than they had to be. They were, however, thorough, and one of them grimaced, then waved a small, bronze falcon-shaped badge triumphantly.
Kalcyr reached down and took it, letting it lie in his palm. Then he looked back at the man from whom it had been taken.
"So, you're a Voice."
* * *
Kersai kept his mouth shut.
It wasn't easy. His heart raced, and he could feel the air fluttering in and out of his lungs. He knew now what was coming, and he felt the sweat beading on his brow.
A part of him wanted desperately to answer the Arcanan's questions truthfully. Another part wanted even more desperately to lie. But the truth would probably have been useless . . . and the lie would probably have been detected.
He clenched his fists at his side, standing between the two men who had searched him and who still held his elbows. There was a reason he'd brought that badge along. He'd hoped it would never be needed, that this moment would never come. But the moment had come, and he found himself clinging to his love for his son and his wife as he gazed silently up at the hard-faced, hard-eyed Arcanan.
* * *
"So, the gryphon's got your tongue, has it, 'civilian'?" Kalcyr demanded. The Sharonian only looked back up at him, and the senior sword felt a cold, hard sense of satisfaction. The man's very silence was proof he was exactly what Kalcyr had been sent out here to find. Not that denying the truth would have done him any good in the face of the verifier spells Five Hundred Neshok had loaded to Kalcyr's crystal.
"Not so talkative now, I see," he said, sliding the PC back into his pocket now that it was no longer needed. Still the Sharonian only looked at him, and Kalcyr shrugged.
The senior sword wasn't going to shed any tears over what needed to be done. For that matter, he wasn't going to pretend he didn't take an intense, personal satisfaction out of it. But unlike the Sharonians who'd murdered their Arcanan prisoners, Kalcyr saw no need for brutality.
He looked at the two men flanking their prisoner and nodded.
Quick and clean, he thought approvingly as the blood fountained from the Voice's slashed throat. Quick and clean.
He looked down at the crumpled body, which seemed smaller, the way dead men almost always did, then looked up at the sky, remembering another day, other bodies.
"Leave him. Mount up," he said flatly, and the dismounted troopers hesitated only for a moment before they obeyed. Kalcyr gave the corpse one more look, then reined his unicorn's head around and started back the way they'd come, leaving the body for the buzzards.
If it was good enough for Fifty Narshu and his men, it's good enough for that bastard, he thought, and never looked back even once.
* * *
"Overall, I like your attack plan, Klayrman," Two Thousand Harshu said. "The only thing I wonder about is whether it wouldn't be better to go ahead and commit the gryphons first. They were certainly effective enough at Fort Ghartoun."
"Yes, they were, Sir," Toralk agreed. "But we also lost over a dozen of them."
"Practically all to that one damned lunatic with the—the what-do-you-call-it? The shotgun," Harshu pointed out.
"True." Toralk nodded. "Still, it did cost us ten percent of our total gryphon strength. I'd like to conserve that, especially if we end up needing it for Fort Salby."
Harshu cocked his head, then frowned slightly while the command tent's canvas flapped gently in the brisk early afternoon breeze.
"That's a logical argument, Klayrman. Why do I think it's not the only one?"
"There is one other thing," Toralk admitted slowly, reminding himself once again that there was a keenly intelligent, highly observant brain behind those intense eyes. "I wouldn't call it a 'logical argument,' exactly, but it is causing me a little concern."
"Well? What is it?"
"It's just that some of the gryphon-handlers are reporting that the compulsion spells don't seem to be working with one hundred percent effectiveness."
"What?" Harshu's eyes narrowed. "What do they mean?"
"That's just it, Sir. They don't seem able to point to any one area in which the spells are malfunctioning. In fact, it's more of a . . . a feeling, I guess you'd say, than anything else."
Harshu looked more than mildly incredulous, and Toralk shrugged.
"I didn't say I'd observed any problems, Sir. I just said the gryphon-handlers are expressing concerns. Some of them, at any rate. And, to be completely honest, I've never been a gryphon-handler. I know that anyone who does that job successfully for very long has to develop particularly acute instincts where the gryphons are concerned, though, so they could well be seeing something I'm not. Whatever's happening, it's making them a bit worried. Let's face it, Sir—it's not exactly a safe job."
This time, Harshu nodded slowly. In fact, gryphon-handling was one of the more dangerous Air Force specializations. Not a year went by that at least one gryphon-handler wasn't turned upon by his attack-gryphons. People who did the job for very long had to develop a feel for when one of the hyper-aggressive creatures was hovering on the brink of breaking the compulsion spells which normally kept its ferocity under control.
"Do you think there really is a problem?" the two thousand asked. "Or do they just think there is?"
"Honestly, Sir, I don't know. I only know there's a certain level of anxiety, and I'd just as soon let them stay where they are for right now. If we need them, we can use them, but if we don't need them, then why not let the handlers settle down a bit before we have to commit them somewhere else?"
"I don't suppose I can argue with that," Harshu conceded. "Especially when the fellow arguing in favor of it is the one who's successfully punched out every fort we've encountered so far."
Toralk nodded slightly at the implied compliment, then waved one hand at the map on the table.
"As you see," he said, indicating a red push pin, "our advance party's located an appropriate oasis for our forward staging point. We're still going to have to fly in a lot of water, though, Sir.
That's going to cut into our total lift capability. That's why my assault plan calls for leaving the heavy cavalry behind, at least temporarily. They're going to be of limited utility in taking out the fort itself, under the proposed operations plan, and leaving the heavy cav behind gives us the best trade-off for hauling water."
"Agreed." Harshu nodded.
"It's going to cost us a couple of days before we can move on Fort Salby, you understand, Sir? We're going to have to use up some additional transport flights leapfrogging them forward to Fort Mosanik before we can ship them the rest of the way to Traisum."
"Understood," Harshu said.
"Then that only leaves the question of exactly what we do about this after we punch out Mosanik." Harshu tapped another push pin, then looked up at his commanding officer. "I've viewed the imagery from the recon-gryphons, Sir. These people may not have magic, but seeing the kind of engineering they're capable of is . . . well, it's impressive as hell, is what it is, Sir. I'd like your guidance on exactly how we want to approach it."
* * *
"I wish I were going with you, Iftar," Therman Ulthar said quietly as he watched his brother-in-law strapping up his backpack.
"Don't be silly." Iftar Halesak looked up at him and shook his head. "You've sure as hell earned a little more rest, Therman!"
"Maybe."
Ulthar moved his newly healed shoulder gingerly. His stint as a prisoner of war of people who didn't have magistrons had given him a whole new appreciation for modern medicine. The fact that he'd recovered the shoulder's full range of motion literally overnight would have been wonderful enough, but it was also the first time he'd been truly pain-free in literally months. He luxuriated in the sensation, but even as he delighted in the absence of pain, that very delight brought home the thing that most concerned him.
"It's not the rest I'm worried about," he admitted, and Halesak frowned.
"What is worrying you?" the garthan asked. "You're not still feeling guilty over what that bastard Neshok did, are you?"
"Actually, I am." Ulthar's expression was profoundly unhappy. "I should have said something, stopped him—"
"By the time you were out of the healers' hands and knew what the hell was going on, Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk had already put a stop to it," Halesak pointed out. "This time, at least," he added.
Ulthar's mouth tightened, and Halesak shook his head.
"I'm telling you, Therman. Let it lie, for now, at least. I don't know what else is going on, but it looks to me like the Two Thousand's decided to put a muzzle on Neshok. If that's the case, then he's not going to be torturing or murdering any more POWs. Which means you don't have to play the noble Andaran paladin in shining armor and maybe get your fool self killed trying to stop it."
"Not trying to stop Neshok, anyway," Ulthar muttered.
"And what does that mean?" Halesak demanded.
"They're leaving Thalmayr in command here."
"Thalmayr?" Halesak frowned in surprise. "Who had that brainstorm?"
"I think it was Five Hundred Isrian."
"Oh, wonderful." Halesak looked as disgusted as he sounded. Chalbos Isrian was one of Two Thousand Harshu's senior battalion commanders. He was also one of the officers who'd argued most forcefully in support of Neshok's plan for dealing with the Voicenet.
"Exactly."
"It may not be that bad," Halesak said, but he sounded as if he were arguing with himself, not his brother-in-law, and he knew it.
"I hope not," Ulthar said bleakly. "But the fact is, Thalmayr is a frigging idiot at the best of times. And I've got a feeling—a really bad feeling, Iftar—that he's just been biding his time. He blames the Sharonians for what happened to us, instead of blaming his own stupidity. And I think—"
He broke off with a shrug.
"You think what?" Halesak asked sharply.
"I think he'll never believe the Sharonians were really trying to help him. I know their healers testified that they were under verifier, and as far as I know, no one's ever been able to fool the verification spells. I know I'm convinced they were doing their best to help me. But I don't think there's enough evidence in the multiverse to convince Thalmayr of that. And what really scares me is how stupid he proved he could be before he was wounded. Gods alone know how much stupider he's capable of being now!"
"Wonderful," Halesak repeated with a sigh, then shook his head. "Thanks a lot, Therman. Now you've almost got me wishing you were coming along with us!"
* * *
"All right," Commander of Five Hundred Cerlohs Myr said, looking around the briefing tent at the circle of faces one last time. It was pitch black outside the tent's canvas walls, but the spell-powered light globes illuminated its interior brilliantly. "All of you know what you're supposed to do. Now, let's go get the job done. Right?"
"Right!"
The one-word response came back in a strong, confident rumble of voices, and Myr nodded in satisfaction . . . mostly.
He looked around at his flight and strike commanders. Their losses in the first attack had come as a shock to all of them, but since then, they'd scored an unbroken string of successes and advanced the better part of three thousand miles in barely eleven days without the loss of a single additional dragon. It was the sort of operation they'd trained at in maneuvers for years and never really expected to have the opportunity to mount, and they knew they'd performed brilliantly so far. Which explained why their faith in themselves went far beyond mere confidence now. They viewed themselves as an elite, and there was a brashness, a swagger in them.
That's good, Myr told himself. Dragon pilots are supposed to know they have big brass ones. That they're the best of the best.
But there was still that tiny, tiny flaw in his satisfaction. That sense that too much faith in themselves might still lead them to take one chance too many. To push that little bit too hard.
And just what do you want to do about it, Cerlohs? he asked himself. You want to make them less confident before you send them out on an op?
There could be only one answer to that question, he reflected, and had to smile at his own perversity.
It's just your own crossgrained cussedness, he scolded himself. You'd find something to be upset about even if you fell into a vat of beer!
"All right," he repeated again. "We've got another fort to burn. Let's get them in the air, gentlemen!"
'Chapter Twenty-Five
Janaki chan Calirath sat in the tiny sitting room attached to his quarters and gazed out at the salmon-colored sky as dawn came to Fort Salby.
The lack of handy trees had enforced a different building plan on Fort Salby, and the time—and the presence of the TTE construction crews—which had been required for the Traisum Cut had provided the labor force and materials to execute that plan. Instead of the wooden palisades which surrounded most portal forts, at least until permanent long-term settlements went in, Salby had been built from a combination of stone and adobe. It had also been built on a considerably larger scale, since it was intended from the outset to be the permanent administrative center for this portal. Its walls—and those of its internal structures—were not only tougher, they were also considerably thicker than those of most portal forts, as well, which helped their interiors stay cooler during the worst of the day's heat.
And it also makes them a hell of a lot tougher, the crown prince thought almost calmly. Almost.
The morning was still cool, chill, as the dry semi-desert air waited for the sun's heat. It was very quiet, and the calm tranquility swept over him, made even stiller and calmer somehow by the chaos swirling within him.
Taleena slept on the perch stand just inside the window, and his eyes lingered on her. There were ghosts in those gray eyes. Ghosts which hadn't been there the day before. The same ghosts which had haunted many a Calirath's eyes over the millennia.
I guess there's no such thing as a weak Calirath Talent, after all, under the right circumstances . . . or the wrong ones, he thought. Too
bad. There are some things I'd really rather not know about.
The Glimpse wasn't entirely clear yet, but it was becoming that way, and as it clarified, dropped into focus, he understood exactly why it had been so strong in the first place.
I need to tell Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik. But if I do . . .
Janaki grimaced. The problem was that he couldn't just tell the regiment-captain. Certainly, he couldn't tell chan Skrithik everything. There was still more he had to find out, more he had to squeeze out of the Glimpse, and there was only one way he could do that.
He stood and walked to the window, leaning on the thick sill, and his face was grim.
What have they done to you, Sir?
He sent the question out into the shadows of his mind. There was no answer, of course, and he closed his eyes against a brief, sharp stab of pain. If what he'd already Glimpsed was true, there was no point trying to send a warning to Regiment-Captain Velvelig. Not now. If he'd only had it a few days—maybe even one day—sooner, then maybe he could have alerted Fort Ghartoun. Done something different.
But he hadn't had it soon enough, and now there was nothing he could do. Not for Velvelig and Fort Ghartoun, at any rate. Or, for that matter, Fort Mosanik. And perhaps it had had to be that way all along.
He gave himself a shake, sucked in a huge lungful of the cool air, and straightened his shoulders.
"Go ahead and sleep, dear heart," he murmured, touching the sleeping falcon's folded wings ever so lightly. "I've got to go talk to someone."
* * *
Rof chan Skrithik was not amused.
Technically, he supposed, it might be argued, in light of the extraordinary orders he'd received, that his early-morning caller was no longer a platoon-captain, in which case he had to be considered the Crown Prince of Ternathia. Actually, of all of Sharona, although his father's formal coronation wasn't due for almost two weeks yet. But whatever the young man's official status might be, having someone knock on the front door of his quarters before he'd had time for breakfast—or even the strong cup of coffee it took to start his mental processes every morning—was . . . irritating.