"You don't think it could be some sort of normal glitch?" Banchu's question sounded a lot more like a statement, and Vuras shook his head again.
"The Regiment-Captain didn't set up his communications schedule just so he could ignore it, sir," he told the TTE's senior engineer. "If he hasn't said anything, then it's because Prince Janaki was right."
Banchu discovered that he had very seldom wished anything in his life as fervently as he wished that Vuras might be wrong. Unfortunately, he was certain the young Limathian wasn't. The question, of course, was whether chan Skrithik's silence resulted from an attack on Fort Salby or simply the cutting of the Voice relay between the railhead and the Traisum portal.
"Do you think they could have taken out the relay?" he asked, and Vuras snorted.
"I explained things very carefully to Voice Orma on our way through, sir. He understands, believe me. And unless the Arcanans have some sort of Voice Sniffer, they aren't going to find him. Even if they might somehow have known where he was before our train came through, we moved him over sixty miles and dropped him off at his own private waterhole with a camo net and tarp. We even found him some trees to hide under." The platoon-captain shook his head again. "Whatever's caused the communications break, it's not because the Arcanans found him, Master Banchu."
"Well." Banchu stood there, but unlike Vuras, his gaze was directed towards the worksite around them. He studied it for several minutes, then looked back at the PAAF officer.
"If you're right, I'm happy for Orma, Platoon-Captain, but it leaves us in a bit of a pickle, wouldn't you say?"
"Oh, I'd definitely say that, sir," Vuras agreed grimly.
"Then I suppose I'd better go see how our preparations are coming."
Banchu climbed down from the freight car and headed off in search of his assistants.
Platoon-Captain Vuras was the senior officer of the double platoon Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik had sent down to reinforce the railhead's security. Unfortunately, even after Vuras' arrival, that left Banchu with less than a company of regular troops to look after the better part of two thousand workers.
The good news was that at least a third of his labor force had at least some military experience. The Trans-Temporal Express had always given veterans preference when it came to hiring practices, and its personnel office vigorously recruited retired army engineers for its construction projects. And in this case, given all of the . . . uncertainties of the situation, Banchu had arrived with a freight car loaded with two thousand Model 10 rifles and a million rounds of ammunition. That was enough to issue virtually all of his workers—even those without actual previous military experience—a personal weapon, at least, and he'd put Foram chan Eris in charge of organizing them. Chan Eris was his senior assistant . . . and just happened to have retired from his first job as a company-captain in the Imperial Ternathian Army Corps of Engineers.
Unfortunately, neither Banchu, chan Eris, nor Vuras had very much in the way of heavy weapons to support those rifles, aside from the pair of Yerthak pedestal guns and single section of light machine guns Vuras had brought with him. There were no mortars, no field guns, no howitzers . . .
What they did have was ingenuity, lots of construction equipment, several hundred miles worth of stockpiled rails, and the mobile machine shops necessary to perform maintenance on millions of Ternathian marks worth of steam shovels, bulldozers, and tractors.
That thought carried Banchu over to the area where chan Eris and Platoon-Captain Harek chan Morak were overseeing the chief engineer's latest brainchild.
Sparks fountained from welding torches as sweating track layers and maintenance crews worked frantically on what had been standard freight cars up until a very few hours ago. Now the wooden sides of those freight cars were in the process of disappearing behind layers of steel rails. Banchu didn't know if a double layer of railroad iron would stand up to one of the "dragons" Petty-Captain chan Darma had described to Hersal Yoritam, Banchu's own assigned Voice. He doubted that anyone had any clear notion of exactly how powerful dragonfire or lightning might be. But his improvised armor ought to stand up to just about anything short of field artillery, and he'd been careful to leave enough loopholes to allow anyone inside the cars to bring at least a dozen Model 10s to bear in any direction.
"How's it coming, Foram?" he asked.
"Well as we could expect, I guess," chan Eris replied. "Mind you, I don't think we've got enough freight cars to put everyone into, even if we end up having time to stick rails on all of them."
"That's what I've always liked best about you, Foram—that sparkling Ternathian optimism of yours."
"What's to be optimistic about?" chan Eris responded sourly, although there was more than a hint of a gleam in his eyes.
"How about starting with the fact that we're all still alive, and we haven't seen any dragons diving on us?"
"Yet. We haven't seen any dragons diving on us yet," chan Eris said. "Of course, the day's still young, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is." Banchu thumped him on the shoulder, then cocked his head. "What about the locomotives?"
"I've got two of them just about ready. The cabs are protected at least as well as the freights, at any rate. And young chan Morak's working on another pair right now. We've done the best we could about protecting the boilers, too, but that's a lot tougher."
"As far as I can make out, these people don't have anything like rifles or machine guns," Banchu told him. "I don't know that they're going to be able to punch through the boilers with anything they've got."
"Maybe not. But all they really have to do to strand us is tear up the track, you know," chan Eris pointed out.
"They can tear up track if they want to," Banchu said more grimly. "Unless they're a lot more experienced with railroads than I think they are, though, they probably don't realize how quickly our people can put the track back together again."
"Assuming we've got enough firepower to keep the bastards off our people while they put it back."
Chan Eris might have sounded as if he were objecting to what Banchu had just said, but he wasn't, and he snorted when Banchu quirked an eyebrow at him.
"I don't know how many troops these people brought with them, Olvyr, but they'd better have a lot if they want to stop us and simultaneously take and hold Fort Salby—especially with Division-Captain chan Geraith as close as he is. I'm not too sure about these armored freight cars of yours. Mind you, I think they're a good idea—I just don't know how good an idea. But I do know that if the other side is stupid enough to spread its forces too thin, it's gonna get reamed."
" 'Reamed,' " Banchu repeated. "Is that one of those technical military terms a civilian like me wouldn't be familiar with?"
"Probably."
Chan Eris squinted up at the crew working on the current freight car, then looked back at Banchu.
"I've got this part of it pretty much under control, Olvyr. Why don't you go worry about something else? My 'Ternathian optimism' and I can handle this."
Banchu chuckled, shook his head, and headed off to see how much construction equipment they could load onto their available flat cars.
* * *
"What the—?"
Under-Armsman Verais lowered the field glasses for a moment, then shook his head and raised them once more.
"We've got three . . . horsemen coming down the valley, Armsman," he announced.
"What?" Junior-Armsman Paras chan Barsak seemed to materialize out of the dusty earth at Verais' elbow.
"There."
Verais passed over the field glasses and pointed at the roadway far below. Chan Barsak raised the binoculars to his own eyes, adjusting the focus, then grunted as the image sharpened.
Verais was right. Three men mounted on something horse-sized and vaguely horse-shaped were cantering along the roadway at a preposterous rate of speed. Afternoon sunlight glittered on what were apparently long, spiral horns sprouting from their "horses' " foreheads, and chan Barsak had never heard o
f a "horse" with what looked remarkably like a carnivore's tusks. Of course, the not-horses were just passing abreast of the shattered corpse of what was obviously a dragon, so he didn't suppose there was any reason they couldn't be equally preposterous.
His lips twitched at the thought, then his forehead creased in surprise.
"They're coming in under a parley banner," he said.
"Parley banner?" Verais hawked and spat over the edge of the drop-off. "How the fuck—pardon my Uromathian—would they know what a parley banner looks like? And if they did know, what makes them think we'd be stupid enough to trust anything they said?"
"I didn't say it was a proper parley banner," chan Barsak said rather more patiently than he felt. "But it's green, they're flying it, and there's just three of them. Whether we can trust 'em or not's really kind of beside the point, don't you think?"
Verais just scowled, and chan Barsak snorted, then shook his head and started calling for the Flicker assigned to his squad.
* * *
Rof chan Skrithik and Sunlord Markan stood side-by-side outside Markan's CP and watched the pair of Arcanan officers being escorted towards them. Both Arcanans were blindfolded, and their third companion had been held at the outer picket line where he could keep an eye on their peculiar horned horses . . . and couldn't see anything about the defenders' positions. Frankly, chan Skrithik was just as happy not to have those unnatural creatures any closer than they had to be.
Actually, he thought grimly, I'd just as soon not have these Arcanan fuckers any closer than they have to be, either.
He thought about the dead prince lying in Company-Captain Krilar's infirmary and the palm of his pistol hand itched.
The Arcanans were marched into the command post. Chan Skrithik and Markan watched them go by, then followed them silently into the sandbagged bunker. It was obvious from the Arcanans' body language that they weren't as calm as they would have liked to appear, yet chan Skrithik found himself feeling an unwilling respect for their sheer nerve. Riding in to parley with someone against whom you'd just launched a sneak attack while in the midst of negotiations in time of peace was not a task for the faint hearted.
The Arcanans were turned to face him and the blindfolds were removed. They blinked as their eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the command post, then one of them looked at chan Skrithik and Markan. His eyes narrowed as he saw the three gold rifles of chan Skrithik's rank insignia and the splinted forearm suspended in the sling tied around the regiment-captain's neck.
"May I crystal back?" the Arcanan said in heavily accented Ternathian, gesturing at the petty-captain who'd escorted him and his companion to the CP.
"You want one of your crystals returned to you?" chan Skrithik responded, and the Arcanan nodded vigorously.
"Can talk better with," he said.
Chan Skrithik frowned for a moment, then glanced at the petty-captain.
"You took one of their rocks off of them?"
"Yes, Sir. We didn't find anything that looked like a weapon—not even a knife—but after everything else, I figured, well . . ."
The youngster shrugged, and chan Skrithik nodded.
"You did exactly the right thing, son. On the other hand, I suppose if we actually want to hear what these . . . people have to say, we should give it back to them."
The regiment-captain held out his hand for the crystal in question, then turned back to the more talkative Arcanan with it on his palm.
"Understand," he said grimly, holding the other man's eyes with his own and letting him see the hate and barely leashed rage, "if we think you're going to do anything with this hunk of rock except talk, I'll shoot you dead where you stand."
"Understand," the Arcanan replied. Chan Skrithik wasn't at all certain that the other man's comprehension of Ternathian was genuinely up to understanding what he'd just said, but he suspected that he hadn't actually needed to say it in the first place.
He stared into the other man's eyes for another moment, then handed the crystal across. The Arcanan murmured something, and the piece of rock started to glow. Then he looked across it at chan Skrithik.
"I am Commander of Five Hundred Dayr Vaynair, Army of the Union of Arcana," he said crisply. Or, to be more precise, the crystal translated crisply. "This," he indicated the older man standing beside him, "is Commander of One Thousand Klayrman Toralk."
"I see."
Chan Skrithik gazed back at them, his eyes hard, but his brain was busy behind them. He knew nothing about how the Arcanans organized their military. For that matter, he didn't know whether the rank titles this Vaynair had just rattled off had been literal or figurative interpretations of their actual ranks. Nonetheless, he didn't doubt for a moment that these were the two most senior Arcanan officers any official representative of Sharona had yet encountered.
Or, a mental voice amended coldly, the most senior Arcanan officers any living, uncaptured official representative of Sharona has encountered.
The Arcanans gazed back at him equally levelly, obviously waiting for him to introduce himself in response. For a moment, he toyed with the notion of refusing to do so, but he brushed the petty temptation aside.
"Regiment-Captain Rof chan Skrithik, Portal Authority Armed Forces," he said.
"Ah." Vaynair nodded. "May I assume I'm speaking to the senior Sharonian officer, in that case, Sir?" he inquired politely.
"At the moment," chan Skrithik replied curtly.
"Very good, Sir." Vaynair cleared his throat. "Thousand Toralk and I have been sent as envoys by Commander of Two Thousand Harshu."
"I see," chan Skrithik repeated. "So I suppose I should assume this 'Commander of Two Thousand Harshu' of yours is in command of this batch of cutthroats and murderers?"
Vaynair winced. His eyes tried to move sideways, towards his superior officer, but he stopped them. As for the superior officer in question, his expression didn't even flicker.
"I—" Vaynair began, then paused.
"You may assume that, Regiment-Captain," the commander of one thousand said into his junior's hesitation. He met chan Skrithik's eyes steadily. "Obviously, I would prefer some other description of the men under my command. Under the circumstances, however, I can appreciate how you might fail to grasp the distinction."
Toralk's voice was firm, chan Skrithik noted.
"Nonetheless," the Arcanan continued, "Five Hundred Vaynair and I are here with a message. Two messages, in fact. Are you willing to listen to them?"
"The fact that you're here at all suggests to me that the last Sharonians who listened to what Arcanans had to say didn't make out very well," chan Skrithik replied coldly, and this time Toralk's eyes seemed to flinch ever so slightly.
"Regiment-Captain," he said after a moment, "I'm an officer in the Union Air Force. Policy decisions are made at a higher level than mine. I say that not in any effort to suggest that the anger you obviously feel is unreasonable, but because there's nothing I can do—or could have done—about the cause of that anger. I was sent here with a proposal based upon the situation in which we currently find ourselves. So, again, I ask you, are you willing to listen to my superior officer's messages?"
Chan Skrithik felt an unwilling flicker of sympathy for this Toralk even through the cold, bitter fury of Janaki's death. He wouldn't have cared to be sent on a mission like this one.
"Very well," he said finally, flatly. "Speak your piece."
"Five Hundred Vaynair," Toralk said quietly, looking at the other officer, and Vaynair cleared his throat again.
"Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik," he said, "I am Two Thousand Harshu's senior magistron—his senior medical officer. We realize that some Sharonians have what you refer to as the Healing Talent. What we've been able to discover about it so far, however, suggests that its primary functions are pain management and the enhancement of the natural healing process. A magistron like myself, however, has the healing Gift, which differs from your people's Talent. With proper training, that Gift can repair damag
es your own people's Talent can't. For example, a sufficiently powerful magistron can actually regenerate damaged nervous tissue."
Chan Skrithik managed to keep his eyes from widening and simply cocked his head, waiting, when Vaynair paused.
"The reason I, specifically, am here, Regiment-Captain," the commander of five hundred continued after a brief silence, "is to propose that my medical staff and I make our healing Gifts available to the wounded from both sides."
"Why?" chan Skrithik demanded.
"For several reasons, Sir. One of them, frankly, is to ensure the best possible treatment for the Arcanan prisoners currently in your hands, many of whom must have been wounded." Vaynair made the admission unflinchingly. "A second, which you may find more difficult to believe, is that magistrons swear an oath very similar to the one your Healers swear. The use of our Gift is supposed to be determined by our patients' needs, not by who those patients might happen to be or the uniform they might happen to wear. And a third is because we couldn't reasonably expect you to allow us access to our own wounded if we were to refuse to treat your wounded, as well."
"I see," chan Skrithik said for a third time. Somewhat to his own surprise, he was inclined to believe Vaynair was sincere about this magistron's oath. And whether the Arcanan was sincere about that or not, the other points he'd made were certainly reasonable enough.
And the least these whoresons can do is save a few godsdamned lives for a change, he thought bitterly.
It was hard, but he managed to keep his voice level. Straining the hate and fury out left it curiously flattened, but there wasn't much he could do about that.
"I'll certainly take your proposal under advisement," he said after several seconds. "Of course, before I could accept it, I would have to ask you to repeat it in the presence of a Sifter."
"That would be someone with your people's Talent for recognizing when someone is lying?"
"It would. Why?" Chan Skrithik's eyes narrowed. "Would you have some objection to that?"
"We would have no objection at all, Regiment-Captain," Toralk replied for the commander of five hundred, "so long as the questions we were required to answer were limited to the discussion of the proposals before us."