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.

"Sir, I've just received an urgent message. It's for you-from Crown Prince Janaki."

Chan Geraith's expression didn't even flicker, but he twitched internally in surprise.

"From the Crown Prince?" he repeated in the tone of someone who wanted to be absolutely certain he'd understood correctly. "Not from His Majesty?"

"That's correct, Sir." Chan Korthal's expression, chan Geraith noticed, was tight and worried, and his own inner tension clicked up another notch.

He started to reach for the bedside lamp to turn up the wick, then snorted and diverted his hand to the window shade above his berth, instead.

Like most trans-universal travelers embarked on a lengthy journey by rail, the men of chan Geraith's division hadn't bothered to reset their watches or readjust their internal clocks. They weren't spending long enough in any one universe to even try to acclimate themselves to local time zones, so they might as well wait for that until they reached their destination. Which meant that it was the middle of the night by chan Geraith's body's time sense, but brilliant sunlight was leaking in around the edges of the window shade as it swayed and bounced gently with the staff car's movement.

He raised it a fraction of an inch, letting natural light illuminate his sleeping compartment, then stood.

After so long, he thought as he shrugged into the robe his batman had left ready on the bedside chair, it would have felt unnatural not to have the floor vibrating and swaying underfoot. He belted the robe, then turned back to chan Korthal.

"All right, Lisar. What's this message?"

Chan Korthal looked at him for a moment, then closed his eyes. Because chan Geraith had no Talent at all, he required the services of a particularly competent Voice, and Lisar chan Korthal filled that requirement admirably. When he began to speak a heartbeat later, it was not his voice chan Geraith heard; it was the voice of his future Emperor, perfectly reproduced.

That was chan Geraith's first thought. Then the words chan Korthal was relaying so perfectly registered, and Arlos chan Geraith's face froze almost as solid as the ice forming in his veins.

"… so that's the situation, Division-Captain," Janaki chan Calirath said through chan Korthal's mouth the better part of fifteen minutes later. "What I've Seen so far explains a lot about the Arcanans' transport and combat capabilities, but I still don't have a clue why they're doing this. The fact that we haven't heard a word from Company-Captain chan Tesh, Regiment-Captain Velvelig, or any of our other outposts seems to me to represent clear proof that this is a carefully planned, well thought out offensive which they must have been putting together the entire time they've been ostensibly negotiating with us.

What that says about their ambitions and ultimate intentions-much less about whether or not there's any point even attempting to treat with them-is more than I'm prepared to speculate about at this point.

"I've relayed as many details of my Glimpses to your staff Voice as I could. Unfortunately, those Glimpses are not yet complete. If and as the opportunity arises, I'll send additional details. At this time, my best estimate is that we'll be attacked here within no more than forty-eight hours, and probably sooner than that. Preparations to meet that attack are underway. In my judgment, my presence here will be necessary if that attack is to be successfully resisted."

Chan Geraith's face was carved from stone. The young man who had sent him this warning was vital to the successful unification of his planet. His life, his function in that unification process, were vastly more important than the defense of a single portal fortress and the town about it. There was absolutely no question in Arlos chan Geraith's mind on that point, and unlike Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik, he was a full division-captain, so-

"That's all I can tell you right now, Sir," Janaki said. "Except to add this. Chunika s'hari, Halian. Sho warak."

The division-captain's eyes closed, and the stone of his face twisted. For an instant, he looked twenty years older. Then he inhaled deeply, and nodded.

"Sho warak, Your Highness," he murmured.

Chan Korthal's eyes opened. Like any Voice with the monumentally high security clearance the company-captain had to carry in order to serve as chan Geraith's staff Voice, he knew there were questions which would never be answered. That he would transmit information again and again which meant a great deal to its recipients, but nothing at all to him. As chan Geraith looked into the younger man's eyes, he saw chan Korthal's curiosity … and his awareness that this was going to be one of those times.

And he was right.

"Thank you, Lisar," the division-captain said quietly. "Please ask Regiment-Captain chan Isail to wake the staff. And have him include Brigade-Captain chan Quay in his wakeup call."

"Yes, Sir," chan Korthal replied, equally quietly, and withdrew from the sleeping compartment.

Chan Geraith contemplated the door which had closed behind the Voice, but his thoughts were far away.

They were with the young man who had sent him that final message in a language so ancient that probably no more than a handful of people in all of Sharona would have understood it.

Chunika s'hari, Halian. Sho warak.

"I am your son, Halian. I remember."

Chan Geraith closed his eyes once more, and let those words toll through him. The words which absolutely precluded him from ordering Janaki chan Calirath out of Fort Salby before the hammer blow landed.

"Sho warak," the division-captain murmured one more time. Then he straightened his shoulders and pressed the button to summon his batman with his uniform.

Alivar Neshok sat in his tent, glaring at the words of the report floating in his personal crystal. Outside the tent, the Expeditionary Force's encampment swarmed with activity. The follow-on echelons of transports bringing up the heavy cavalry which had been left behind weren't due to arrive for another several hours, but the preparations for the attack on Fort Salby were moving ahead already.

Moving ahead based on the information I got for them, Neshok told himself bitterly. Moving ahead at the end of an entire advance that's only been possible at all because of the information I got for them!

He managed to keep his teeth from grinding together, but it wasn't the easiest thing he'd ever done. He knew who he had to thank for Two Thousand Harshu's abrupt decision to "relieve you of the stress of the duties you have performed so outstandingly," as Harshu's memo had so cloyingly put it. Thousand Toralk and that sanctimonious prick of a Healer, Vaynair. They were the ones.

Well, we'll see just how well their godsdamned offensives go without me holding their hands and wiping their arses for them!

His nostrils flared, but even as he told himself that, deep down inside of him a tiny voice told him he should have seen this coming long ago. That in the end, it was Harshu, not Toralk or Vaynair. That the two thousand had used him to do a dirty job that needed doing without getting any of the dirt on his own lily-white hands, and that now Harshu had decided to discard him. That the gratitude, the patronage, Neshok had anticipated were going to turn out to be very different things, indeed, as far as Harshu, that

"noble" Andaran, was concerned.

But that was all right, he told that tiny voice right back. He had another patron, one senior to Harshu, and Two Thousand mul Gurthak would appreciate and remember his efforts on mul Gurthak's part.

He'd better, anyway, Neshok told himself grimly. If he doesn't-if he tries to send me for the long drop, too-he won't like what I have to say to the Inspector General. Not one little bit, he won't like it.

A raised voice shouted orders outside his tent, a squad of infantry doubled past, equipment clattering, and somewhere on the far side of the hot, dusty encampment he heard the rumbling grumbles of irritated dragons growing impatient for their meal. Everyone else was so busy, so focused, and here he sat, finishing up his routine paperwork like a good little clerk in a forgotten corner. Tidying up his reports, making sure all the blanks were filled in. And, while he was at it, doing some careful editing about his exact interrogation techniques, as well.

He glowered down at the crystal for several more seconds, then drew a deep breath and got back to work.

"This," Under-Armsman Kardan Verais muttered under his breath, "is a godsdamned pain in the arse!"

It became evident that he hadn't spoken quite as much under his breath as he'd thought he had when Junior-Armsman Paras chan Barsak slapped him across the back of his pith helmet.

"Less bitching, more digging," chan Barsak told him. The junior-armsman was noted for a certain lack of understanding for anyone who gave less than his full effort to the task at hand, but Verais wasn't particularly worried. Given how liberally coated his shirtless torso was with a pasty skim of dust, dirt, and sweat, even chan Barsak had to be relatively satisfied with his efforts.

Of course, Verais reflected, "relatively satisfied" wasn't quite the same thing as "completely satisfied."

"I don't mind digging. It's prying out the godsdamned rocks I hate," he said with a grunt as he heaved another head-sized hunk of stone to one side. "Besides, this is a stupid place to be digging a hole anyway."

"Oh, you think so?" Chan Barsak was just as filthy as Verais-not surprisingly, since he'd been the one doing the digging until they'd changed off again ten minutes ago. "You don't like the field of fire?"

"I like the field of fire just fine … I guess." Verais dragged a forearm across his sweaty face, then spat and watched the dust-darkened spittle disappear over the lip of the nearly vertical slope in front of them.

"We're a long way from the road, but I guess we can reach it from here. But we could've covered it better from closer, and without having to hump the guns and ammo all the fucking way up here! Not to mention-" he started swinging the mattock again, grunting the words between swings "-being a hells of a lot easier to dig in!"

"Yeah?" Chan Barsak looked over the other PAAF troopers working to prepare the squad's position.

Most of them were stripped to the waist, like Verais. Over half of them were digging in the hard, rocky, sunbaked mountainside, hacking out weapons pits that were going to be shallower than The Book wanted no matter how hard they tried. Most of the rest were shoveling the spoil from the pits into the sandbags that were going to go on top of those holes when they were done. All of them were sweating hard under the brutal sun, and unlike chan Barsak, the majority of them weren't Ternathians.

"Look," the junior-armsman said, searching for the best way to explain to a non-Ternathian, "if Crown Prince Janaki says a shit storm's coming, then you better believe it's coming and the crap is gonna be really, really deep. Trust me on this. What? You think maybe his family's been doing what it does for so long without figuring out how to get its shit straight?"

"Yeah, but-"

""thinspace"'But' nothing," chan Barsak interrupted. "If the Regiment-Captain wants us up here after talking to the Prince, there's no way in hell-anyone's hell-I'm going to argue with them. And if I'm not gonna argue with them, then you aren't going to."

"Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it. I got it!" Verais grumbled, swinging the mattock still harder.

"Good."

Andrin Calirath jerked upright in her bed so quickly that Finena reared up on her bedside perch, mantling instinctively.

Andrin never even noticed her beloved falcon. Her sea-gray eyes were wide, unseeing, as she Saw with other senses, another Talent.

How long she sat there, frozen, Watching the horrifying images and sounds rolling through her brain, she never knew. But then, finally, she closed those haunted eyes once more. She sat very still, unmoving in the hushed, comforting midnight silence of Calirath Palace, and her face was white and strained.

"Janaki," she whispered. "Oh, Janaki."

"Are you sure about this, Platoon-Cap-I mean, are you sure about this, Your Highness?" Company- Captain Lorvam Mesaion asked.

Fort Salby's senior artillerist stood on the fort's western fighting step, watching as fatigue parties, reinforced by almost every male civilian above the age of twelve, worked with focused, purposeful intensity.

"Sure about what, Sir?" Janaki asked.

He'd come up to the stretch of wall between the two out-thrust bastions which flanked the main gates and climbed up onto an empty gun platform to gaze out towards the portal. Mesaion wasn't sure exactly what kept bringing the Ternathian Crown Prince back to this position again and again. From his own perspective, it was the ideal place to keep an eye on the preparations for which he personally was responsible, but he knew Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik had been keeping Janaki extraordinarily busy.

Too busy, the company-captain would have thought to be making his way up here every hour or so.

"Sure about putting those things up here," Mesaion said, jerking his head at the sweating, grunting PAAF troopers with sledgehammers who were busy spikingthe base plates of ten Yerthak pedestal guns'

mounts into the solid tops of the towers and bastions. Well, the reasonably solid tops of the towers and bastions; Mesaion had a few private reservations about how well they were going to stand the recoil of any sustained firing. The half-ton weapons themselves sat to one side, and getting those pigs up to the tops of the towers had been anything but easy. In fact, in the end they'd had to move most of them by brute force and human muscle power.

Mesaion just hoped it was all going to be worth it. And that they were going to get off more than a few shots per gun before the masonry's solidity or the crude modifications they'd made to the mountings themselves betrayed them.

Now Janaki glanced at the guns, then arched an eyebrow at the artillerist, and Mesaion shrugged.

"They'll have the reach to cover the approaches from this wall, and from the western towers, Your Highness," he pointed out. "But if you're right about where their attack's going to be coming from, the ones on the eastern wall aren't going to be much help."

"Not against ground targets, no," Janaki conceded.

Mesaion opened his mouth, then closed it again. Although he was from New Farnal, not Ternathia, he'd read enough history to know how well the Calirath Talent had served the Empire over the millennia.

Still … dragons? Flying monsters with the heads and wings of eagles and lions' bodies?

"I know it sounds crazy, Company-Captain," Janaki said with a tired smile. "Just humor me."

"If you say so, Your Highness," Mesaion replied after a moment.

"How are the rest of your positions coming along, Sir, if I may ask?"

"They won't be ready before dawn, if that's what you mean, Your Highness. Aside from that, they're coming along pretty well."

"Good, Sir. That's good."

Janaki nodded to Mesaion and stepped closer to the parapet and leaned his elbows on it, gazing out across the town of Salby and up at the looming portal. Chan Skrithik had loaded up all the women and children he could cram onto the available railroad cars and sent them steaming off towards Salym.

Unfortunately, he'd had space for less than eight hundred civilians, and sheltering the rest was going to pack the fort to the bursting point. Still, that would be far better than leaving them to face the oncoming storm unprotected.

Assuming, of course, that they managed to keep the Arcanans' monstrous winged beasts from turning the fort into nothing more than a conveniently concentrated slaughtering pen.

Janaki's mouth tightened as he contemplated the unspeakable casualties which still might all too readily be inflicted upon people for whose protection he and his family were responsible. Then he made himself relax as he looked down at the dust rising from either side of the ribbon of railroad that reached along the valley floor below towards the portal.

Company-Captain Mesaion might have his doubts about some of the artillery deployments Regiment Captain chan Skrithik had ordered on the basis of Platoon-Captain chan Calirath's Glimpse, but that hadn't prevented the artillery officer from getting the guns deployed as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, Fort Salby, despite the thickness of its walls, hadn't really been intended to be defended against an attack by modern heavy weapons. The fighting steps simply weren't deep enough to mount true artillery-especially not artillery on field carriages, instead of fortress carriages-and the gun platforms had never been intended for anything heavier than machine guns, so Mesaion's filed artillery had to be deployed outside the walls, along the foot of the stair-step-like bluff upon which Salby stood, if the guns were going to be used at all.

That explained a lot of the dust Janaki gazed down upon. The gun pits were going to be only a bit deeper than usual, but chan Skrithik-or, rather, Janaki, to be scrupulously honest-had insisted upon the thickest possible overhead cover. Firing a four-inch breech-loader, or one of the three-point-four-inch quick-firers, with a roof of heavy sandbags only a few feet over the gunners' heads promised to be … exciting. But not as "exciting" as things might have been with dragons raining fire or lightning into the gun pits with them.

Janaki wished chan Skrithik had had more field guns available. Even with the light horse guns Sunlord Markan and Windlord Garsal had brought along, though, the regiment-captain had little more than a dozen pieces. He and Janaki had spent an arduous couple of hours bent over the map table, matching terrain against Janaki's fragmentary Glimpses, to pick the best places to put the guns he did have, but neither of them was happy about the total numbers they had to deploy.

The single three-gun section of 4.3-inch howitzers and the nine heavy mortars Mesaion had available could probably take up at least some of the slack. They, however, couldn't be used from positions with overhead cover, which was why they'd been deployed inside the fort itself. From their position on the parade ground they were protected from direct counter-fire and had excellent three-hundred-sixty-degree command, as long as the targets were far enough away for their high-trajectory fire to clear the walls.

Of course, if the Arcanans' dragons got through to the fort … .

Tin roofs, laid over appropriated railroad ties and covered with layered sandbags, were going up all along the fort walls' fighting steps, as well. They weren't as sturdy as Janaki would have preferred, but they were a hells of a lot better than nothing, and they should offer significant protection against plunging dragons' breath. He hoped so, anyway.

Covered rifle pits were also springing up outside the walls, placed to cover the artillerists as well as to protect the ground-level approaches to the fort, and there were quite a few cavalry troopers wielding shovels, picks, and axes out there.

Sunlord Markan and Company-Captain Vargan, in a rare bout of agreement which had probably surprised them even more than it had chan Skrithik, had both looked more than a little affronted at how emphatically Janaki had informed them that Sharonian cavalry had no business at all on the same battlefield as Arcanan cavalry. Actually, they'd been even more affronted because of the Arcanans' lack of modern small arms. Only fools-which neither Markan nor Vargan were, however little they might care for one another-would have even contemplated committing cavalry against dug-in riflemen, machine guns, and field guns, but both Markan and Vargan were cavalry troopers of the old school.

Against crossbows the possibility of one last, anachronistic, glorious charge had suggested itself to both of them, which had turned them into unlikely allies in this one case.

Janaki had used both booted heels to stamp on that notion just as hard as he could. Vargan had accepted the veto with something which might have been described as good grace by a sufficiently charitable observer. Markan, on the other hand, had accepted it with scrupulous, icy courtesy. Of the two, Janaki considerably preferred Vargan's reaction.

Still, the sunlord had agreed that under the circumstances his precious cavalry horses were less important than human lives. Fort Salby's stables had been emptied of their intended occupants, and all of the command's horses had been moved down to the paddocks built around the oasis some several miles east of the fort to make room to pack in still more civilians. The men who might otherwise have ridden those horses were out there behind those shovels, digging in as riflemen, instead. And Janaki had to admit that however much Markan might have longed for one final charge, he'd turned energetically to the task of integrating his troopers into chan Skrithik's defensive plan when that charges was denied him.

Now we just have to see whether or not it does any good, Janaki thought grimly.

"I'd be happier if we could hit them earlier, Sir," Commander of Five Hundred Myr said.

He and Klayrman Toralk stood outside the Operations Tent, looking out across the improvised dragonfield. The transports were beginning to show signs of accumulating fatigue, Toralk noted, and several of the battle dragons were showing fatigue in their own fashion. Which, unfortunately, consisted of being even more irritable than usual.

"I can understand that," Toralk agreed, and he could. But even dragons' eyes needed some light. This Fort Salby had the potential to turn into a nasty handful, and this time the approach was going to be tricky enough all by itself. It was no time for battle dragons and their pilots to fly into hillsides they couldn't quite see in time … or discover that not even dragon eyes had enough light to pick out their targets accurately.

"It's not another damned wooden fort with just a handful of men in it, Sir," Myr pointed out in what Toralk couldn't quite call a wheedling tone. "You've seen the plans."

"Yes, I have," Toralk agreed once again.

The detailed maps of this portal chain which they'd captured at Fort Ghartoun included one of Traisum, and the modified image-interpreting spellware had worked perfectly. They knew precisely where Fort Salby was, and exactly what the terrain around it looked like. They'd even found what one of their prisoners had identified as a map of Fort Salby itself, and "tougher nut" was a grossly inadequate way to describe the difference between it and something like Fort Ghartoun.

Salby's walls were taller, thicker, and stronger. They were also going to be far more resistant to fire, and the buildings inside the fort were made of the same materials, which would make the reds' breath weapons much less effective. If taking those walls and those internal structures turned into any sort of hand-to-hand fight, it was going to be bloody. Very bloody.

One thing the map didn't show was what sort of cellars or underground passages might be integrated into the fort. There had to be some, and they were going to pose problems of their own, however the expeditionary force went about attacking the place.

"Listen, Cerlohs," Toralk said, turning to face his Talon commander fully, "I understand what you're saying. And I agree that our chances of taking them completely by surprise would be better if we hit them in the dark. But your chances of losing a dragon-or two or three of them-on the approach would also be a lot higher."

Myr looked unhappy, but he couldn't really argue that point. The approach route they'd selected took advantage of the mountainous terrain between the portal and their objective, using it to screen and conceal the incoming strike until the very last minute. But while battle dragons were trained for nap-ofthe- earth flight, threading the needle of the valley which would lead them to Fort Salby wasn't something to try in pitch blackness.

"Assuming all your dragons survive the approach," Toralk continued, "you've still got the problem that, as you just pointed out, this is going to be a really hard target, and it's got a garrison at least four or five times as big as anything we've hit so far, with artillery and more of those damned 'machine gun' things of theirs. If they have time to get their heavy weapons into action, we're going to get hurt. Remember what happened to your reds at the swamp portal."

"That's exactly what I am remembering, Sir," Myr replied. "If we hit them fast enough, with enough surprise, we'll be on top of them and knock those weapons out before they even know we're coming.

They won't get a chance to bring those weapons into action at all, and, frankly, I'd like that one hells of a lot better than the alternative!"

"But to do that you have to actually hit them," Toralk pointed out. "And to do that, the dragons have to be able to see them."

Myr started to open his mouth again, but Toralk shook his head.

"I understand what you're saying, Cerlohs. But look at it this way. As far as we can tell, they still haven't gotten any messages out. And because of the captured maps we can finally actually read reliably, we haven't even had to send in a recon flight, so they can't know we're coming."

For a moment, Myr looked as if he might argue that point, but then he grimaced and shook his head.

Although no gryphons had been sent through into Traisum, a very high altitude gryphon had overflown the Sharonians' "railhead," barely three hundred miles up-chain from the ruins of what had been Fort Mosanik. The image interpreters were still trying to make sense out of the take from the recon crystal, still trying to figure out what some of the huge, complicated, awkward-looking machinery was for, but the fact that all those workers were still out there, still working, was the clearest possible proof the Arcanans' presence at Fort Mosanik remained undetected.

"Since they don't know we're coming, anyway, and since these people won't know any more about dragons or gryphons than any of the people we've already hit, you're still going to have what amounts to complete tactical surprise," Toralk continued. "Maybe they'll have a few seconds, even a few minutes, to see you coming, but even if they do, how much good is it going to do them? As far as they know, they're still at peace, so they're going to be maintaining a peacetime routine. It'll take time for them to get from that mindset into putting up any sort of effective resistance. Do you really think they're going to manage to do that, to break their heavy weapons out of storage, and get them into action, before you can get in at least two or three passes with your yellows?"

Myr shook his head, and Toralk snorted.

"I don't think so, either. But for those passes to be effective, you've got to have the light for targeting. If you don't, if you miss on the first pass, then you're likely to have to come back through much heavier fire, and even their rifles may get lucky."

"All right, Sir." Myr smiled crookedly. "You've made your point. For that matter, it was my people who came up with the timing in the first place! Just put it down to opening-night jitters, I suppose."

"Don't think you're the only one feeling them," Toralk said dryly. "Frankly, I'll be happier when we're able to settle in on the defensive instead of advancing further and further into the unknown this way. I know no thrusting, offense-minded Air Force officer is supposed to admit that, especially where a ground-pounder might overhear him. But you know what? I'm feeling sort of lonely all the way out here at the end of our advance."