That, however, was something the future was going to have to take care of in its own good time. For the present, more pressing worries and responsibilities pushed that concern out of the forefront of his mind. And one of those worries was the way Crown Prince Janaki had insisted upon standing in this exposed position high atop the fortress wall.
He stepped towards the prince, reaching out one hand to urge him to at least climb down from the gun platform to the parapet fighting step, but someone else's hand touched his own shoulder first.
The regiment-captain twitched in surprise. Then he turned his head, and Chief-Armsman Lorash chan Braikal shook his head with a small, sad smile.
"No, Sir," the Marine said softly. "Begging your pardon, but it wouldn't do any good."
"Chief," chan Skrithik told Janaki's senior noncom quietly, "I can't just leave him up here. Not after seeing all of this!" He jerked his head at the smoke, the fires, the corpsmen and their volunteer civilian assistants carrying broken and savagely burned bodies to Company-Captain Krilar's infirmary. "We've got to get him under cover."
"No, Sir." Chan Braikal's voice was respectful, but he shook his head again.
If he'd thought about it, chan Skrithik might have been surprised. No Ternathian officer with more brains than a rock ever doubted that while officers might command, it was the tough, experienced core of long-service noncoms who actually ran the Empire's military. Yet it was unusual, to say the very least, for one of those noncoms to argue with a full regiment-captain at a time like this . . . or about something like this.
As if any of us had ever experienced "something" like this in the first place!
The thought flickered somewhere down inside, and chan Skrithik cocked his head questioningly.
"That's not how Glimpses work, Sir." Chan Braikal's expression, chan Skrithik realized, was just as worried as his own, and the chief-armsman's voice was rough-edged. "I got a sort of crash course about his family's Talent before he took over the platoon," the noncom continued. "What he's doing now—it's called 'fugue state,' Sir. And for it to work, he has to be at what they call the 'nexus.' "
"Nexus," chan Skrithik repeated carefully.
"Yes, Sir." Chan Braikal took off his helmet and tucked it under his left arm so that he could run the fingers of his right hand through his short, sweat-soaked hair in a gesture which shouted the depth of his worry more eloquently than any words. "The nexus is the place where whatever it is that makes his Talent work . . . flows together most strongly."
It seemed to the regiment-captain that chan Braikal was trying to find the exact words to express something that didn't really lend itself well to explanations.
"Sir," the chief-armsman said earnestly, "I never expected to see this. Gods! I never wanted to see it, because they told me that if I did, the shit would be neck-deep and rising fast, begging your pardon. But the thing is, for him to go into fugue state at all, he has to be in exactly the right place. No one else can tell where that 'right place' is. Triad—he couldn't've told you ahead of time, most likely. And that place could change, even in the middle of a Glimpse. But until it does, it's where he has to stay, and you won't be able to move him."
"I've never heard anything like that, Chief." It could have sounded accusatory, but it didn't. "According to all the legends—"
"Sir," chan Braikal grinned crookedly, "if you were a Calirath, would you want your enemies to know you'd be stuck in one place at a time like this?" Chan Skrithik shook his head, and the chief-armsman shrugged. "That's probably the main reason the stories never mention it. On the other hand, His Highness says that someone with a really strong Talent actually can move around in fugue state. Some of those with the very strongest Talents have actually been able to fight in fugue state, for that matter. He says his Talent isn't that strong, though. That's why he's just sort of . . . frozen like this."
Chan Skrithik heard the desperate unhappiness in the Marine's voice. Chan Braikal didn't want his crown prince—and a young man to whom he was obviously and deeply devoted—standing on this wall any more than Rof chan Skrithik did.
"I see, Chief." Chan Skrithik laid a hand on chan Braikal's shoulder. "I wish he'd explained that to me earlier."
"With all due respect, Sir, I think he probably figured that if he had, you'd've kicked us out before the bastards attacked."
"Maybe I would have," chan Skrithik admitted, and chan Braikal shrugged again.
"Maybe I wish you had, too, Sir. Gods know I wanted to argue with him about it. But he told me he has to be here, and somehow, when he says that, you just can't . . ."
Chan Braikal's voice trailed off and he shook his head in a helpless, bemused gesture chan Skrithik understood perfectly. He hadn't been prepared for the sheer force of Janaki's presence, either. Nor was he any more confident than chan Braikal of his ability to argue with the crown prince's decisions, and so he only smiled sadly and squeezed the chief-armsman's shoulder.
"Well, in that case, Chief, we'll just have to see to it that we keep him in one piece, won't we?"
* * *
"All right, Sir," Klayrman Toralk said. "Here's what we've got left."
He copied the files in his own crystal to Two Thousand Harshu's and waited while Harshu's quick, fierce eyes darted over the information. The two thousand digested it with his customary speed, then looked back up at Toralk.
"I remember your saying the gryphon-handlers were worried about their control spells."
"Yes, Sir. And they still are—worried, I mean. But they still don't have anything concrete to point to, either. I didn't want to use them before because, on the basis of our previous experience, neither Five Hundred Myr nor I thought we'd need them. Obviously, we were wrong."
"So was I," Harshu reminded him. The two thousand's tone was slightly absent as he looked back over Toralk's hastily recorded notes.
"Are you sure about bringing Urlan's transports in this close?" he asked after a moment.
"According to the maps, both of the designated LZs should be dead ground from their observed positions."
"Agreed. But don't forget that their artillery isn't like ours, Klayrman. They don't necessarily need direct lines of sight to their targets."
"Yes, Sir. I tried to allow for that by placing them far enough from their main position to be out of their range."
"I understand. Unfortunately, we've already encountered at least one weapon—those big, rotating things on the walls—that we'd never seen before. I'm not inclined to assume they don't have other, longer-ranged weapons we also haven't met up with before."
"Well," Toralk brought up his own copy of the information and paged through to a map generated from the Sharonian charts captured at Fort Ghartoun. "We could put them here or here, instead," he said, using his stylus to drop a pair of crosshairs onto the map. "Both spots are farther from the fort, so Urlan's cavalry would have farther to go, but there's a steep, solid mountain slope between both of them and the fort. From what we've seen tinkering around with those captured 'mortars' of theirs, I don't think even their weapons could drop something in that close on a reverse slope that steep."
"Um." Harshu frowned, contemplating the map. Then he nodded, although he still didn't look precisely enthralled.
"The other alternative, Sir, is to make it an infantry assault," Toralk pointed out. "If we throw the gryphons straight into their faces, and the tactical transports come in close behind them, we'd have the transports' breath weapons, such as they are, for support and the Sharonians would probably be too busy with the gryphons to knock many of them down."
"Tempting," Harshu acknowledged. "Very tempting, in some ways. But our men are going to need heavy weapons support if they're going to have a chance against Sharonian weapons at close range. And as you pointed out, we may need those transports' breath weapons later on, especially if this attack doesn't succeed. Besides, if we can take Salby, infantry is going to be more useful than cavalry afterward for defending the sort of terrain between the fort a
nd the portal."
He gazed down at the map for several more minutes, rubbing his chin, then paused.
"You know," he said slowly, "if we timed it properly, we might still be able to use the transports after all." Toralk's eyes narrowed, and his superior looked up at him with a smile. "If you were a Sharonian, Klayrman, and you'd never seen anything like a dragon or an augmented horse or a unicorn, which of the three would monopolize your attention if you saw all of them coming at you at once?"
'Chapter Twenty-Nine
"immortal Aruncas!" Tarnal Garsal, Windlord Garsal, muttered.
The second lord of horse stood in Sunlord Markan's command post, looking back at the smoke-streaming PAAF fort behind them, and he had ample reason to invoke the Uromathian god of war. Both cavalry officers, like Rof chan Skrithik, were veterans of long service. And, like chan Skrithik, neither of them had ever seen or imagined anything like this.
Actually, Garsal found the smoke and flames almost comforting in their normality. At least they were much less disconcerting than the enormous beast—the dragon, he told himself, using the Ternathian crown prince's terminology as he looked back at it—which had crashed to earth less than sixty yards from the CP. It loomed like a scaly mountain of broken bone and flesh where it had landed, crushing a dozen of Garsal's cavalry troopers in its death plunge.
"Aruncas, indeed," a voice said at Garsal's shoulder.
He turned his head and saw Sunlord Markan gazing out across the sandbags at the same sight. The first lord of horse was the second ranking officer of the Salby garrison, which had made him the proper choice to command the infantry and artillery positions outside the fort itself. He didn't exactly look shaken . . . but his expression came far closer to that than anything Garsal had ever seen from him before.
"I didn't really believe him, you know," Garsal said. Markan glanced at him and raised one eyebrow. "I suppose I didn't want to believe him," Garsal admitted, and this time Markan snorted.
"I imagine most of us would have preferred not to," the sunlord said after a moment. "It's like something out of a child's fairytale about monsters, ogres, and magic spells."
Garsal nodded, and Markan turned his eyes back to the monstrous, broken-winged carcass sprawled across the mangled bodies of his men.
There was another reason Garsal hadn't wanted to believe Prince Janaki, the sunlord thought. Another reason he hadn't wanted to, for that matter.
Markan had his own very private reservations about his emperor, but Chava Busar was still his emperor, and—up to this moment, at least—Markan had found himself forced to agree with Emperor Chava on at least one point: far too many people in Sharona were reacting with far too much panic to the reports from the frontiers.
Stories about "magic" simply didn't belong in the everyday world of hardheaded, practical men. Oh, no one had questioned the fact that the Arcanans were actually there, or that they had massacred the Chalgyn Consortium survey crew with frighteningly unknown weapons. But Hell's Gate was forty-eight thousand miles from Sharona, and hard on the news of the massacre had come the word that less than four hundred men had taken the swamp portal away from the enemy with ludicrous ease. Sharonian weapons had been clearly and obviously superior to anything they had yet faced, and nothing else the Arcanans had demonstrated since that short, brutal battle had been especially terrifying. Surely not enough to justify the almost hysterical response of certain of Sharona's political leaders!
Whatever happened out on the distant frontier, there was no real chance of an enemy successfully fighting his way through the portals and all of the wearisome miles between them to actually reach Sharona. Even assuming that all of those arguing in favor of some sort of worldwide—hells, multiverse-wide—empire were genuinely sincere in their motivations and not simply seeking to manipulate the political equation for their own advantage (which seemed unlikely, to say the least), it would have been foolish to allow oneself to be caught up in the hysteria.
Now, smelling the smoke from Fort Salby, looking at the huge, broken body of a genuine dragon while he awaited the second assault from a force which had advanced four thousand miles in less than two weeks, Jukan Darshu, Sunlord Markan, knew those "hysterical" leaders had been right all along. If the Arcanans had dragons that breathed fire and spat lightning, if they could cover eight percent of the total distance to Sharona in only two weeks, then the gods alone knew what else they might have or be able to do. It was entirely possible that they could fight their way clear to Sharona, after all . . . and that Zindel of Ternathia and Ronnel of Farnalia had been dead serious from the outset. That whatever Chava Busar might think, Zindel had not been manufacturing and manipulating the crisis which had impelled him to the throne of a united Sharona.
Firsoma help us all! he thought. If the Crown Prince Saw this in a Glimpse, what has his father Seen?
He didn't much care for that question, for a lot of reasons.
Of course you don't. You're a Uromathian, and Uromathians don't like Ternathians, do they? But if the Arcanans have capabilities like this, then maybe the Conclave was right. Maybe we can't afford to be Uromathians or Ternathians any longer . . . even if it does mean putting another crown on Zindel chan Calirath's head.
* * *
"They're coming back."
Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik twitched as Janaki spoke for the first time in at least half an hour.
"Your Highness?"
"They're coming back," Janaki repeated in that same otherworldly tone. "They're using their dragons to circle around the other aspect of the portal in Karys. Then they're going to use the western aspect in Traisum and swing wide, try to keep us from seeing them while they put cavalry on the ground."
"Cavalry? In the open against dug-in infantry and artillery?" Chan Skrithik couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Yes," Janaki said. He turned those daunting eyes on the regiment-captain. "It's not going to be that easy. They can put them on the ground east of us and avoid most of our covering positions, and their cavalry is a lot faster than ours. And they've got something else. Something to cover them. I can't quite See it yet. And they're loading up other dragons with infantry. They'll be coming at us, too, and I think they're going to use those eagle-lions this time, as well."
Chan Skrithik's jaw tightened. He would have been totally confident of his entrenched infantry's ability to deal with any Sharonian cavalry attack. But as Janaki had just reminded him, he wasn't dealing with Sharonians . . . as their ability to avoid his entrenchments demonstrated.
"Can you See how they'll come at us, Your Highness?" he asked.
"Not yet," Janaki replied, and a hint of frustration shadowed his voice even through its detachment. "There are still too many possibilities. They're coming together . . . focusing. But they aren't there yet."
"Can you See where they'll land their cavalry?" Chan Skrithik asked, opening his map case.
"Here or here." Janaki's forefinger stabbed the map, and chan Skrithik looked up at Senior-Armsman Isia.
"Message for Company-Captain Mesaion. Give him these coordinates." Chan Skrithik read them off from the map grid. "Tell the Company-Captain I want chan Forcal to Watch both of them. And I want the howitzers ready to engage."
"Yes, Sir."
The Flicker had been writing quickly while the regiment-captain spoke. Now he read back his shorthand notations. Chan Skrithik nodded approval, and Isia Flicked the message canister to Mesaion's Flicker. The artillerist's acknowledgment appeared on the parapet beside chan Skrithik less than two minutes later.
* * *
Commander of Fifty Delthyr Fahrlo was still trying to come to grips with what had happened to the initial attack as he and Deathclaw led the line of transport dragons out of the portal's western aspect.
The maneuver wouldn't have been very practical without dragons. The nature of the portals between universes meant that any traveler from Karys found himself confronting the same sort of enormous cliffs no matter which way he passed thro
ugh the portal, but the westernmost cliffs were quite a bit higher than those to the east. Wind erosion had softened and grooved the tops of those sheer walls until the pressures between the two sides of the portal had equalized, but the palisade of stone remained steeply and starkly unscalable.
Facing east into Traisum, from the opposite side of the portal, the cliffs were much shallower, and the wind screaming down the slopes beyond the cliffs' edges had carved deep ravines. The Sharonian construction engineers had taken advantage of that when they cut their road and "railroad" routes. As far as Fahrlo could see, they hadn't had very much choice about that, but the Expeditionary Force did, and Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk had decided to take advantage of that fact.
Too bad they didn't take advantage of it before, Fahrlo couldn't help thinking bitterly, even though he knew it was unfair. Nobody could have predicted what had happened to his fellow battle-dragon pilots and their mounts before they'd actually seen it. He knew that. But he also knew that somehow he, a mere commander of fifty, had become the senior battle-dragon pilot of the entire First Provisional Talon.
Of course, I'm a "commander of fifty" with only three dragons to command.
He grimaced behind his helmet visor at the thought, then shook his head. He had other things to be concentrating on at the moment.
* * *
"The dragons are landing at the second location, Sir," Chief-Armsman chan Forcal told Company-Captain Mesaion.