"I deeply regret that you've apparently so completely misconstrued and misunderstood my efforts, My Lord," Skirvon told chan Baskay through stiff lips. "Since, however, you seem to have done so, by all means explain to me precisely what sort of response to your emperor's terms you would deem a sign of 'progress.' "
* * *
"For a start," chan Baskay told Skirvon in an only slightly less indifferent tone, "you might begin by at least acknowledging the fact that our current possession of this junction—paid for, I might add, with the blood of our slaughtered civilians—means we are not, in fact, negotiating from positions of equal strength. We need not even discuss sharing sovereignty over this junction with you. We already have it. As Sharona sees it, Master Skirvon, it's your job to convince us first, that there's any logical or equitable reason for us even to consider giving up any aspect of the sovereignty we've secured by force of arms, and, second, that there's any reason we should trust your government to abide by any agreement you manage to negotiate."
Skirvon ordered himself not to glower at the arrogant Sharonian. That sort of blunt, hard-edged attitude was far more confrontational than anything he'd seen out of Simrath to this point, and he wondered what had prompted the change.
But it's too little, too late, you prick, he told Simrath from behind the mask of his eyes. All I have to do is keep you talking for another hour or so, and then . . .
"Very well, My Lord," he said after a moment. "If you insist upon rejecting my government's efforts to reach some arrangement based on something other than brute force, I suppose I have no choice but to meet your proposal on your own terms.
"As you say, Sharona is currently in possession of this junction. I would submit to you, however, that it would be a grave error to assume that that happy state of affairs—from your perspective, at least—will continue indefinitely without some indication of reasonableness from your side. My government has stated repeatedly, through me, that talking is better than shooting. That doesn't mean shooting couldn't resume if our legitimate claims are rejected on the basis of your current military advantage."
Skirvon sat forward in his chair once more, hands folded on the rock-steady table floating between him and Simrath, and looked the Sharonian straight in the eye.
"In all honesty, My Lord," he said with total candor, "given the fashion in which you've just spoken to me, and spoken about my government, a resort to military force isn't totally unattractive to me. I suspect, however, that your masters would be no more pleased than my own if that should happen. So—"
Rithmar Skirvon went on talking, making himself pay no attention to the steadily ticking seconds and minutes flowing away into eternity.
'Chapter Two
Company-Captain Balkar chan Tesh pushed back his canvas chair and stood. The morning officers' conference had run later than usual, thanks to the message chan Baskay and Arthag had Flicked to him, and that, in turn, had both delayed his breakfast and reduced his appetite. Now he left his mess kit on the folding field table for his orderly to deal with and stepped back out of his tent into the morning light.
It was an hour earlier in the day on this side of the portal, and he squinted his eyes as he gazed through it at the mist hanging above the hot, humid swamp on the other side. The autumn weather was growing steadily cooler on this side, especially under the towering trees, but the far side of the portal was much nearer to the equator. At the moment, chan Tesh was grateful to be spared the swamp's miserable climate, but if his people were still living under canvas once winter got here, that was going to change, he thought wryly.
Of course, by then we should have someone senior to me in here to take over, he told himself. And we may have enough manpower to let me divert enough working parties to actually finish those winter quarters Frai's working on.
He snorted at the thought, although his amusement was less than total. Master-Armsman Frai chan Kormai had been making pretty good progress on throwing together split-log barracks which would at least be weathertight, if not precisely luxurious. Until, of course, the Arcanan "diplomats" had arrived on the scene. Up to that point, it had appeared the mysterious enemy was intent on avoiding any further contact, which had suited chan Tesh just fine. The longer Sharona had to get its own reinforcements forward before they were needed, the better.
But the Arcanans' reappearance, and the transportation capabilities their magic-powered boats had revealed, had forcibly reminded chan Tesh of just how vulnerable his position out here really was. He had been dividing his efforts between improving his troops' fighting positions and trying to provide them with at least rudimentary housing . . . until the arrival of Rithmar Skirvon and Uthik Dastiri refocused his priorities. Following their appearance, he'd pulled his work parties off the barracks-building details to concentrate on strengthening his troop emplacements . . . and reduced his work parties' size to make certain those emplacements were adequately manned at all times.
Of course, "adequately" was an often slippery word, and chan Tesh wished he could be more confident that it applied in this instance. Unfortunately, while it was decidedly on the small side as the inter-universal gates went, the swamp portal was still four miles wide, and there'd never been much point in pretending the forces under his command could hold its entire frontage against a determined attack—especially not given that the actual frontage to be covered amounted to eight miles, not just four. Although the rest of chan Tesh's command had finally caught up with the three platoons he'd taken ahead in response to the Arcanans' original attack on the Chalgyn Consortium survey party, that still left him with fewer than eight hundred men. Instead of spreading them out and dissipating his combat power, he'd chosen to divide the command in two. Platoon-Captain chan Dersal, the senior of his two Marine platoon COs, was in command of the positions covering the southern face of the portal, while chan Tesh commanded the ones to the north.
In the face of such a broad frontage, he'd had to settle for attempting to dominate it by fire. Luckily, the rest of his mortars and half a dozen three-point-four-inch field guns had come up with the remainder of the relief column. He'd dug the mortars in in central positions on both Hell's Gate sides of the portal, with the field guns positioned on their flanks, prepared to sweep the approaches to the mortar pits with shrapnel. Also luckily, the ground sloped generally upward on this side of the portal, in both directions. That gave him pretty fair lines of fire into, across, and along the portal's Hell's Gate aspects. He'd taken advantage of that and located the rest of his firepower to protect and support the mortars, because only they had the reach to cover the full width of the portal's faces from their gun pits. He'd positioned his machine guns with the best supporting fields of fire he could arrange, and his men had spent a great deal of time clearing fire zones of scrub saplings, which had further improved upon his basic elevation advantage.
The fact that the water table was farther from the surface on this side of the portal—although the ground immediately surrounding the portal was heavily saturated with swamp water—was another factor in his decision to defend it from Hell's Gate. He'd been able to go down more than two feet on this side without striking water, and he'd taken advantage of that to dig his men and weapons in as deeply as he could. And after he'd gotten them dug in, he'd gone right on digging. The mortar pits had to be open if he was going to fire the weapons at all, and the field guns were equally open in order to give the quick-firing guns the best command possible. Despite their lack of overhead cover, the artillery should be relatively safe, given the Arcanans' apparent lack of any sort of indirect-fire artillery.
His other positions, however, were as heavily bunkered as he could contrive. They were the protective barrier between the portal and his gunners, and he'd ordered them dug in below ground level. The aboveground bunker walls were over four feet thick, with log retaining walls filled with tamped-down earth, while the roofs consisted of at least four layers of crisscrossed logs covered by multiple layers of sandbags, as well. He was con
fident that they would have stood up well even against Sharonian-style field or medium artillery, and judging from the Arcanan fireball spells' apparent lack of penetration, they ought to resist even direct hits almost indefinitely.
He'd also arranged a few other things he hoped would come as nasty surprises to any potential attackers, but he'd always been aware that he'd be hard-pressed to stop any attack in force.
Many of his men (and at least some of his junior officers), on the other hand, thought he was being alarmist. He knew that. Despite his best efforts, they remained supremely confident—even overconfident—of their ability to deal with anything the other side might produce. Yet as chan Tesh had pointed out at this morning's conference, people always learned more from failure than from success, and what Sharona actually knew about Arcana's military capabilities remained pitifully inadequate. At least some of the Arcanan troops his command had defeated two months ago had managed to escape, however—that had been obvious from the moment Skirvon mentioned the confirmed death of that Arcanan civilian, Halathyn, in the attack—which meant the other side had probably learned more than he would have liked about Sharonian capabilities. But even if that weren't true, the natural response would be for Arcana to be bringing up the equivalent of its big guns (whatever the hells that might be) just as quickly as it could, and that could turn very ugly very quickly. Especially if those damned boats of theirs were any indication of their general mobility.
Chan Tesh himself was painfully well aware that much of his earlier victory owed its success to the Arcanans' complete lack of familiarity with modern firearms and mortars. The peerless stupidity of their commanding officer hadn't hurt, either, and that advantage, in particular, was something he couldn't count on the second time around. Just as—as he'd reminded his subordinates this morning—they couldn't afford to assume for a single instant that what they'd seen so far out of Arcana was, in fact, the best Arcana had.
There's a hell of a lot of difference between a four-and-a-half-inch mortar and an eleven-inch howitzer, he thought, and the other side hasn't seen that yet, either, has it?
At least chan Baskay's dispatch had helped him ginger up his platoon commanders. Which was remarkably little comfort compared to the way it had underscored chan Tesh's existing concerns.
He snorted again, this time without any humor at all. Chan Baskay's message had at least seen to it that chan Tesh's entire command was at a higher state of readiness. He hoped to all the gods that those among his subordinates who thought he was jumping at shadows turned out to be right. He was confident he and his men were as ready as they could be, but he was also more aware than ever of just how exposed, vulnerable, and—above all—unsupported they actually were.
* * *
Commander of Fifty Tharian Narshu had been carefully chosen for his present duty.
Despite his junior rank, Narshu had seen more than his fair share of combat against everything from brigands to cattle rustlers to claim-jumpers to landowners using "guest workers" as virtual slave labor. More to the point, perhaps, he wasn't the Regular Army officer he appeared to be. He'd been trained in the far harder, tougher school of the Union of Arcana's Special Operations Force, as had half of the men under his command. Two Thousand mul Gurthak had grabbed Narshu and the single squad of his platoon he'd had with him, snatched them (and the transport dragon which had been moving them to join the rest of his platoon in Jylaros) out of the regular transport queue, and hurried them forward to Two Thousand Harshu. Harshu had been delighted to see them . . . and he'd used them to provide the core of Master Skirvon's "honor guard."
The honor guard's other twelve men were primarily window dressing, along solely to make up the numbers, who had no idea their commanding officer and fellow troopers weren't, in fact, Regular Army at all. Narshu wished fervently that all of them could have been Special Operations, but there were never enough SpecOps available. Two Thousand mul Gurthak had been unreasonably fortunate enough to have found even one of Narshu's squads this far out into the boondocks when it had all hit the fan. Besides, a dozen SpecOps troopers ought to be more than sufficient, especially with Sword Seltym Laresk to run the squad. Narshu and Laresk had served together for almost two years now, and the fifty had total confidence in the noncom.
He was glad he did, too, because Tharian Narshu, unlike the late, unlamented Hadrign Thalmayr, wasn't about to underestimate his opposition. This Platoon-Captain Arthag, for example, was as tough and competent as anyone Narshu had ever seen. But competence didn't matter, he reminded himself, when it was offset by complete ignorance and total surprise, and these people knew nothing about even the simplest magic.
If there'd been any doubt about that, it had been dispelled several days ago when Narshu and his men first started bringing their daggerstones with them.
Narshu had been in two minds about the wisdom of issuing the daggerstones that soon. He'd been afraid that, despite Five Hundred Neshok's and Master Skirvon's assurances to the contrary, the other side might have some way of detecting them. It wasn't as if they were particularly hard to spot, after all—that was why they were so seldom used by the Spec Ops teams, despite their firepower—and their maximum effective range was barely ten yards. The possibility of getting the ridiculously short-ranged weapons close enough to do any good was minimal in the face of even the most rudimentary security spells.
Two Thousand Harshu had insisted, however, and Narshu couldn't really fault the two thousand for it. Unlike these Sharonians and their "Voices," there was no way for Narshu to report the success or failure of his current mission in time for the two thousand to modify his own plans. That was the entire reason Narshu was out here—to level the communications playing field, as it were—and if his mission had been likely to fail simply because the Sharonians could, indeed, recognize a daggerstone for what it was, finding out at the very last moment would be disastrous.
No one on the other side had noticed a thing, though. Nor did any of them seem aware of the real reason for all of the last few weeks' "incidents."
And, he thought, glancing idly at his chronometer, it's about time the game began.
* * *
Rithmar Skirvon kept his attention focused on Viscount Simrath, and not on Fifty Narshu, just as he'd been very careful to avoid any casual glance at his own chronometer. Despite that, he was almost agonizingly aware of Narshu's presence behind him, and despite the coolness of the dry northern air, he felt sweat gathering along his scalp as the tension coiled tighter and tighter inside him.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain his air of concentration, to respond to Simrath's statements with the proper degree of normality. He'd expected some of that, but he hadn't anticipated just how difficult it might prove, and he found himself unexpectedly grateful for Simrath's earlier abrasiveness. The Sharonian diplomat had introduced a confrontational atmosphere which, in turn, offered an acceptable pretext for any sharpness on Skirvon's part, especially in the wake of all of the unfortunate outbursts of temper over the past couple of weeks. As a matter of fact, those "outbursts" had been carefully designed for the specific purpose of covering any last-minute tension on the Arcanans' part if the Sharonians happened to notice it.
None of which made the diplomat feel one bit calmer as the last few moments trickled past.
* * *
Tharian Narshu's right thumb hooked into his broad, stiff sword belt.
It was a completely natural-looking mannerism, if not precisely the most militarily correct posture in the world. In fact, he'd taken considerable pains to display that particular "sloppy habit" to the Sharonians for the last couple of weeks. It was about as unthreatening as it could be—his hand was on the opposite side from his sword's hilt, after all—but he'd wanted that sharp-eyed bastard Arthag to be accustomed to it. The last thing Narshu needed was for the Sharonian officer to notice anything out of the ordinary on the day when it finally mattered.
The fifty's own eyes never strayed from their slightly bored,
incurious focus on Viscount Simrath, but his carefully trained peripheral vision made one last sweep to confirm that the rest of his men were in position. Only his SpecOps squad had a clue about what was going to happen. The rest of his "honor guard" detachment were all tough, capable vets, but they weren't SpecOps. They lacked the specialized training and experience of Narshu's own squad, and he'd decided against briefing them in ahead of time on the theory that what they didn't know was coming they couldn't inadvertently give away.
I'm going to have to apologize to them when this is all over, he thought. They're good troops, and they're going to have a right to be pissed off when they find out what's really been going on.
But he'd take care of that later; at the moment, he had other things to think about.
He completed his methodical check of his troopers' positions. Everyone was exactly where he was supposed to be. That was good. In fact, the only flaw in Narshu's satisfaction was that Arthag was outside his field of view.
It was just like the bastard to be uncooperative, the fifty thought sourly. He knew where Arthag was, of course, but he wasn't about to turn his head and look for the man—not at a moment like this. Besides, Arthag wasn't Narshu's target. Seltym Laresk was responsible for dealing with him, and the sword was perfectly positioned to Narshu's left rear.
Yes, he is, the fifty told himself. So why don't you stop worrying about Seltym, and get on with it?
It was, he decided, an excellent question, and his right hand flexed.