Darcel Kinlafia stood moodily in the chill, rapidly falling evening under the mighty trees and tried not to look sullen.
It wasn't easy, not even when he knew all the reasons for the delay. Not even when his intellect approved of most of the reasons. For that matter, not even—or, perhaps, especially—when the delay was at least partly his own fault for insisting upon accompanying Acting Platoon-Captain Arthag's expedition in the first place.
Patience, he told the hunger coiling within him. Patience, they're here now.
And it was a damned good thing they were, too, he reflected, watching the head of the column.
The horsemen and their mounts looked exhausted, as well they might, given how hard they'd pushed themselves over the past five days. Kinlafia grimaced and walked across as Platoon-Captain Arthag looked up from his mess kit, then stood.
The column halted, and the man riding at its head beside the standard-bearer with the dove-tailed company guidon, embroidered with the three copper-colored cavalry sabers which denoted its place within its parent battalion, looked around. Kinlafia had never actually met him, but he recognized Company-Captain chan Tesh without any trouble, and the dark-skinned petty-captain beside him had to be Rokam Traygan. The fact that Darcel had seen chan Tesh's face through Traygan's eyes without ever seeing Traygan's was one of those oddities Voices quickly became accustomed to.
Chan Tesh's searching eyes found Arthag, and the Arpathian officer waited until the company-captain had dismounted before he saluted.
"Acting Platoon-Captain Arthag," he said crisply.
"Company-Captain chan Tesh," chan Tesh replied. The newly arrived cavalry officer looked almost Shurkhali, but he was a Ternathian, with an accent which sounded so much like Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl that Darcel winced. Chan Tesh's voice even had the same timbre.
"I'm glad to see you, Company-Captain," Arthag said.
Chan Tesh studied his face for a moment in the rapidly failing light. Kinlafia wondered if he was looking for any indication that Arthag actually resented his arrival. After all, chan Tesh's superior rank gave him command, which also meant his name was undoubtedly the one going into the history books. And his impending arrival had effectively nailed Arthag's feet to the forest floor, preventing the Arpathian from acting until chan Tesh got there. But if the Ternathian had anticipated any resentment from Arthag, what he saw in the other officer's expression clearly reassured him, because he smiled wearily.
"We're glad to be here, Platoon-Captain," he said. "Not least because our arses need the rest!"
"I think we can provide more than just a rest, Company-Captain," Hulmok Arthag said. "My people have a hot meal waiting for you."
"Now that, Platoon-Captain, is really good news," chan Tesh said. "I think my backbone's about ready to start gnawing on my belt buckle from the back!"
It was a humorous exaggeration, but not that much of one, chan Tesh reflected. He and his column had been just over twenty miles from the entry portal to New Uromath when the stunning news reached them. Chan Tesh was willing to admit privately that he hadn't been pushing the pace at that point, since he'd expected to relieve Company-Captain Halifu on routine garrison duty and hadn't really been looking forward to taking over Halifu's rain-soaked portal fort. The Uromathian company-captain's reports had made it abundantly clear just how soggy chan Tesh's new duty post was likely to be.
But word of the mysterious strangers who'd slaughtered the Chalgyn Consortium survey crew had changed all of that. Chan Tesh had quickly reorganized the transport column, leaving the infantry and the majority of the support troops, including his half-dozen field guns, with his executive officer while chan Tesh himself took a hard core of mounted troops ahead as quickly as he could. Over the last five days, he and his relief force had covered almost three hundred miles, most of it through dense, rainy forest. If it hadn't been the worst five-day ride of Balkan chan Tesh's life, it had to come close.
But we're here now, he thought grimly. And if Arthag's report's as accurate as his reports've always been in the past, the bastards on the other side of that swamp portal aren't going to be a bit happy about that!
He looked over his shoulder as the rest of the column came in. He was proud of those men. Tired as they were, weary as their mounts were, there'd been no straggling. These were mostly veterans, who didn't worry about parade-ground precision, but the column was well ordered and well closed up.
Chan Tesh's own cavalry company—Copper Company, First Battalion, Ninth Regiment, Portal Authority Armed Forces—led the column. He'd left one of his three platoons with his XO, and Copper Company had been a bit understrength to begin with, but he still had eighty-five experienced, hardened troopers. Then there were the two platoons of Imperial Ternathian Marines.
Most nations' marines were straight leg-infantry—not surprisingly, since marines were supposed to spend most of their time in shipboard service. Ternathian Marines were a rather special case, however. They prided themselves on their ability to go anywhere and do anything their orders required, and they'd been a mainstay of the Portal Authority's multinational forces for over half a century. There were those in the Ternathian Army who were firmly convinced that what had really happened was that the Marines had hijacked a lion's share of the Ternathian commitment to the Portal Authority purely as a means of preventing the Imperial Marine Corps' demise, and chan Tesh rather suspected that those critics had at least a semi-valid point. Certainly there'd been an ongoing struggle for the military budget between the Imperial Marines and Imperial Army for as long as anyone could remember. The Navy, of course, had always stood by and watched the squabble with a sort of amused tolerance. No one was going to suggest funding land troops at the expense of the Imperial Navy, after all.
But whatever the Marines' motives might have been, they'd succeeded in carving out a special niche in trans-universal operations. They did more of it than anyone else, and as they were wont to point out, they also, quite simply, did it better than anyone else. Despite his own Army career, chan Tesh couldn't argue about that. They still couldn't match the staying power and sheer, concentrated offensive punch of the Ternathian Army—they were light infantry, after all—but they had developed an almost incredible flexibility and took a deep (and well-deserved) pride in their adaptability. Which was why chan Tesh had left his Army infantry behind and brought his Marines along; they were just as competent in the saddle as they were on foot.
Unlike the cavalry troopers of chan Tesh's own company, or Arthag's, the Marines wore their normal Ternathian-issue battle dress. It was a comfortable uniform, with lots of baggy, conveniently placed cargo pockets. It was also dyed a low-visibility khaki color. Marines might be willing to ride to work, but they were still infantry—dragoons, at least—and they preferred to fight on foot. Whereas a cavalryman usually found it a bit difficult to conceal his horse, Marines were adept at using terrain and concealment.
And it's damned comforting to have them along, chan Tesh thought frankly. Again, they were a bit under establishment. Their nominal troop strength should have been two hundred and sixteen men, including officers and supports. Their actual strength was only a hundred and fifty-seven, but they more than made up for any lost firepower with the machine-gun squad attached to each platoon.
"I hope you'll pardon my saying so, Sir, but it looks like you came loaded for bear."
Chan Tesh turned back to Acting Platoon-Captain Arthag as the other man spoke.
"It seemed like the thing to do," the company-captain said, with a mildness which fooled neither of them.
"Can't argue with that, Sir," Arthag said grimly, and chan Tesh studied the man thoughtfully again for a moment or two.
Hulmok Arthag had a high reputation among the Portal Authority's military personnel, despite his relatively junior rank. Chan Tesh suspected that the Arpathian would have been promoted long since if his positive genius for small-unit operations along the frontier hadn't made him too valuable where he was to spare. Arpathians as a group tended to be good at that sort of thing, but Arthag was a special case, with an absolutely fiendish ability to get inside the thinking of portal brigands and claim-jumpers. In many ways, the promotion he so amply merited, and which was coming his way at last, was almost a pity. The Portal Authority was eventually going to get a highly competent regiment-captain or brigade captain out of it, but it was going to give up a truly brilliant platoon-captain to get him.
"I was relieved when they told me you were the man at the sharp end of this stick, Platoon-Captain," chan Tesh said. Arthag's Arpathian expressionlessness didn't even waver, of course. "I've heard good things about you. In fact, I've wanted the chance to work with you for a while now. I'm just sorry it had to come after something like this."
"I am, too, Sir," Arthag replied. He looked into the falling darkness, and chan Tesh felt a slight shiver as he followed the Arpathian's eyes and saw the tangled, seared timber where the survey crew had been massacred.
"To be honest, Sir," Arthag continued, turning back to his superior, "it's been . . . lonely out here. I was relieved when Company-Captain Halifu's dispatch reached me with the news you were on your way."
"I only wish we'd been able to let you know sooner," chan Tesh said, and Arthag's eyes narrowed very slightly.
"Voice Kinlafia's been extremely helpful to my Whiffer and Tracer, Sir," he said, very carefully not so much as glancing in Kinlafia's direction. "His special insight into what happened here's been invaluable in pointing them—and, for that matter, my scouts—in the right direction."
"I wasn't criticizing Voice Kinlafia," chan Tesh said mildly. "If I'd been in Company-Captain Halifu's position, I'd probably have made exactly the same decision. It's just unfortunate that Halifu didn't have another Voice to take up the slack. We had to get within forty miles of his fort before my Flicker could reach him."
Arthag nodded with what might have been the slightest possible trace of reassurance, and chan Tesh hid a grimly amused smile. He didn't doubt for a moment that at least some of the rear-area wonders were going to criticize Halifu for allowing his precious Voice to accompany the rescue force to the wrong side of this universe's entry portal. But, as he'd just said, chan Tesh felt the Uromathian officer had made exactly the right decision. And at least Halifu had two good Flickers of his own. They might not be Voices, but they were capable of teleporting—or "Flicking"—relatively small objects, like dispatch cases, for distances of up to thirty or forty miles. Some Flickers had managed as much as fifty miles, and they were prized by Sharonian military organizations. They might not have the reach or the flexibility of Voices, but they were a damned good substitute over their effective ranges, and there were often decided advantages to transmitting physical messages.
Junior-Armsman Tairsal chan Synarch, chan Tesh's senior Flicker, had managed to get word to Halifu less than twenty-four hours ago, and Petty-Armsman Bantha, Halifu's senior Flicker, had relayed that information to Arthag, in turn. Since chan Tesh and his column had crossed over into this universe, Traygan and Kinlafia had been in close communication, homing chan Tesh unerringly in on Arthag's position and bringing the company-captain fully up to date on everything Arthag's scouts had discovered.
"I'm sorry it took us as long to get here as it did, Platoon-Captain," chan Tesh said after a moment. "The last twenty-five miles to your entry portal were a copperplated bitch. Much worse than I'd anticipated, to be honest."
"I know. I've come to the conclusion that the sun simply isn't allowed to shine in that universe," Arthag replied, and chan Tesh snorted. Whether the Arpathian was right about that, or not, there was no getting around the fact that what appeared to be every creek, stream, rivulet, river, and puddle in New Uromath was well over its banks, which hadn't done a thing for his column's progress.
"At least I had plenty of time to scout the enemy position," Arthag continued. Once again, it could have been a complaint, since the peremptory order for Arthag to stand fast until chan Tesh arrived with his reinforcements had precluded any immediate action on Arthag's part. But it was apparent to chan Tesh that Arthag was sincerely relieved to see the column. The Arpathian's comment about the opportunity to scout the enemy was also well taken, and chan Tesh nodded in forceful agreement.
"Yes. I'm looking forward to seeing your sketches myself."
"Of course, Sir."
Arthag made a signal to one of his troopers, and chan Tesh watched the man in question—a tallish, but not huge, Farnalian with the two red pips of a petty-armsman—respond. It was a pity Arthag hadn't had a Flicker of his own. He'd been able to receive dispatches from Halifu, but he hadn't been able to send his own notes back. Now the petty-armsman marched over, saluted, and produced a leather dispatch case.
"Petty-Armsman Loumas, Sir," Arthag said. "He's my Plotter."
"Ah." Chan Tesh nodded in understanding. Plotters were highly valued in the military. Unlike Mappers, they could provide only limited information on terrain, or what lay under the surface of the ground, but—also unlike Mappers—they were sensitive to the presence and location of living creatures. Like Mappers, they were range-limited, and usually to much shorter ranges than a Mapper. Indeed, it was the rare Plotter who could reach beyond four or five miles. But they were still extremely useful as scouts, since it was impossible for any sentry or picket within their range to conceal himself from them.
"Loumas took our scouts right up to the portal," Arthag continued, opening the dispatch case and removing a carefully executed sketch map. "Chief-Armsman chan Hathas sketched the actual maps. He's out with the advance picket, keeping an eye on them, at the moment."
He handed the map across to chan Tesh, who unfolded it quickly. Darkness had finished falling while he and Arthag were talking, and there was insufficient light to make out details. He started to walk across to one of the campfires, but Loumas produced a bull's-eye lantern and opened the slide, letting its light fall across the map.
"Thank you, Petty-Armsman," chan Tesh said courteously, then bent his full attention to the sketch.
"You didn't pick up any sentries on our side of the portal, Petty-Armsman?" the company-captain continued as he studied the map.
"No, Sir," Loumas replied. "Picked up quite a few deer, and even a couple of bears, but couldn't find hide nor hair of anyone else. Proper idiots they are, if you don't mind my saying so."
"I don't mind at all, Petty-Armsman," chan Tesh said, glancing up from the sketch map. "As long as we all remember that these people can obviously do things we can't. It's possible they have some way of keeping an eye on things that we've never heard of. Maybe they didn't need sentries."
"Yes, Sir," Loumas said just a tiny bit stiffly. Then he grimaced. "Sorry, Company-Captain. It's just seeing what these bastards did, knowing where they are—"
He broke off with a shake of his head, and chan Tesh nodded. Not necessarily in agreement, but in understanding. He'd already seen exactly the same reaction in the men of his own column. The news that a civilian survey crew had been cut down like animals would have been bad enough under any circumstances. The fact that Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr had been caught in the middle of it, and that Darcel Kinlafia hadn't been able to pick up even a whisper of her Voice since, made it much, much worse. His men wanted payback, and, to be completely honest, so did chan Tesh.
The company-captain returned his attention to the sketch and shook his head mentally as he absorbed the details.
Maybe I was just a bit hasty there, he thought as he studied the drawing. If this sketch is as accurate as I think it is, then Loumas damned well has a point about what these people use for brains!
"You say your chief-armsman made the sketch?" he asked Arthag, never looking up from the map.
"Yes, Sir." Something about Arthag's voice made chan Tesh look up. The Arpathian acting platoon-captain was actually grinning, and chan Tesh raised one eyebrow.
"Chief-Armsman chan Hathas is a much better sketcher than I am, Sir. When Loumas and his scouting party got back and described what they'd seen, I decided I needed to take a look for myself. I did, but I didn't feel my own artistic abilities could do justice to it, so I got the chief-armsman to do the job. As nearly as I can tell you from my own observation, he got the details just about perfect."
"Vothan," chan Tesh muttered. "Maybe they really are all idiots."
Whoever was in command on the other side clearly wasn't very well versed in portal tactics. To be fair, portals—even relatively small ones like the one on the map in chan Tesh's hands—were always difficult to defend. The bizarre physics involved made that inevitable. On the other hand, there were intelligent ways to go about defending one, and then there was . . . this.
The chief-armsman had sketched the portal from both aspects, which the combination of the portal's relatively small size and the other side's failure to picket this side had made much simpler for him to do. And from the sketch, it appeared that the opposing commander was either terminally overconfident or else incredibly stupid.
Unless, chan Tesh conscientiously reminded himself, he really does have some kind of god weapon over there.
Which, given the fireballs and lightning bolts he'd already used on the Chalgyn Consortium crew, certainly wasn't impossible. But still . . .
The enemy had thrown up fieldworks—palisades, with what were obviously firing loopholes, protected with shallow earthen berms—to cover both aspects of his side of the portal. Because the portal itself separated them, he'd been forced to dig in two totally separate forces which were hopelessly out of visual contact and support range of one another, despite the fact that they were less than a hundred yards "apart." That much chan Tesh could readily understand, since every portal defender faced the same problem.
But the earthworks themselves puzzled him. They looked like something left over from the days of muzzleloading muskets and smoothbore cannon, he thought, except that they seemed a bit flimsy even for that. He didn't see a single bunker, and it was obvious from chan Hathas' sketch that there were no dugouts, either. In fact, chan Tesh didn't see any overhead cover.
"These ramparts of theirs don't look very . . . substantial," he commented. "You got a good enough look to confirm the berms are really that shallow?"
"Yes, Sir." Arthag shrugged. "I'm not sure, but I think Voice Kinlafia may have come up with an explanation for why everything over there looks so insubstantial."
"Indeed?" Chan Tesh looked up from the sketch once more, turning his attention to the one man in civilian clothing.
He hadn't ignored Kinlafia up to this point out of discourtesy, but rather because the Voice looked so bad. His face was tightly clenched around a mixture of anguish, fury, and gnawing impatience which chan Tesh needed no Talent to recognize. Kinlafia's eyes were like burnt holes in his face, and chan Tesh wondered if the man's jaw muscles had truly relaxed even once since the rest of his crew was butchered. Chan Tesh had no desire to intrude upon the man's obvious pain, but if Kinlafia had a theory to help explain what chan Tesh was seeing in this sketch, he wanted to hear it.
"You have a theory, Voice Kinlafia?" he asked courteously, and Kinlafia nodded. It was a jerky, almost convulsive nod, and his expression was taut as he waved back towards the fallen timber chan Tesh hadn't actually seen yet.
"I'm not sure what they use for 'artillery,' Company-Captain," he said, "but whatever it is, it isn't anything like ours. I know Voice Traygan has relayed Whiffer Parcanthi's and Tracer Hilovar's reports about the odd residues they've picked up to you. We still don't have any sort of explanation for what could have created them, but during the time Voice Nargra-Kolmayr—" his voice went flat and dead for a moment as he used Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr's formal title, chan Tesh noted "—and I were linked, I Saw their heavy weapons in action. They have a lot of blast effect, and the . . . 'lightning bolts,' for want of a better word, they throw seem to affect targets in a remarkably deep zone. But neither of them seems to have very much in the way of penetrative effect."
"No?" Chan Tesh cocked his head, one eyebrow raised, and Kinlafia shrugged.
"They seem to rely entirely on the direct effect of the heat or lightning they generate. The 'fireballs,' in particular have a pronounced blast effect, but I think it's actually secondary. And they seem to . . . detonate the instant they encounter any sort of target or resistance, even if it's only a tree limb or a screen of brush."
"Obviously, none of us—" Arthag's micrometric nod indicated the troopers of his platoon "—actually saw the battle, Company-Captain. But after examining the damage patterns out there, I'd have to say I think Voice Kinlafia's on to something. There's no sign anywhere of the sort of punch-through effect you'd get from our own artillery. And no shell splinters or shrapnel, either. Their artillery seems to be spectacular as hell, and it's certainly devastating to anyone actually caught in what Voice Kinlafia calls its 'zone of effect,' but that zone is smaller than we originally thought, and I don't believe their 'guns' are going to be able to punch through very much in the way of serious cover."
"So you and the Voice think the reason their fortifications seem so . . . spindly is that their own weapons wouldn't be able to penetrate them and they've assumed that since theirs wouldn't, ours can't?"
"Something along those lines, Sir," Kinlafia said, and surprised chan Tesh with a tight smile. "I've noticed that people—whether they're military or civilians—tend to think in terms of the things they 'know' are true. It's called relying on experience, and in general, it's a pretty good idea, I suppose. But in this case, no one has any experience. Not really."
"A very good—and valid—point, Voice Kinlafia," chan Tesh said, impressed by the other man's ability to think when he was so obviously on fire with grief and fury. The company-captain nodded respectfully to the Voice, then turned back to Arthag.
"These here," he said, tapping the sketch with his forefinger. "These are those tube things—the artillery—Voice Kinlafia's just been describing?"
"Yes, Sir," Arthag agreed, and chan Tesh nodded.
There were, he conceded, a dismayingly large number of the odd artillery pieces. Some of them were also clearly larger than others, which to chan Tesh's mind suggested that they were probably more powerful and longer ranged. From the way they were positioned, he suspected they'd been emplaced to sweep the relatively flat ground on the far side of the portal with fire. Given their demonstrated potency, even without the secondary fragmentation effect of Sharonian artillery, that probably made sense. But why in the gods' names had they put them right on top of the portal that way? And with no better cover than they had?
"I think they're going to have a little problem here, Platoon-Captain Arthag," chan Tesh said after a few seconds. He looked up with a thin smile. "I've brought along a mortar company."
Arthag's eyes narrowed. Kinlafia's, on the other hand, began to glitter with fierce satisfaction, and chan Tesh nodded.
"There's a spot right here, Sir," Arthag said, indicating a point on the sketch map. "There's a nice little ravine on our side of the portal, deep enough to give cover to a standing man. It doesn't have a direct line of sight to the portal, but I think it would do just fine for mortars."
"Good." Chan Tesh gave the map another look, then folded it up.
"I believe you said something about supper, Platoon-Captain," he observed. "We're going to need to rest the horses for at least several hours, and I don't mind admitting that I could use a little sleep myself. Let's go find that food, and while I eat, I'd like to talk with your Whiffer and Tracer and Voice Kinlafia."
"Of course, Sir. Right this way."
Once the animals had been picketed for the night, chan Tesh's weary men devoured the supper Arthag's troopers had held ready for them, then fell into their sleeping bags, dead to the world within minutes. Chan Tesh would desperately have liked to join them, but he had other duties to discharge first. So he sat propped against a tree at Arthag's campfire, finishing his second bowl of stew, and listened quietly to the reports from Arthag, Kinlafia, Parcanthi, and Hilovar.
It wasn't a pretty story. Chan Tesh had already heard Kinlafia's report of the initial attack, relayed by Rokam Traygan, but it was different hearing it directly from Kinlafia himself. As the Chalgyn Consortium Voice made himself recount every detail of the horrendous attack, chan Tesh could literally taste the man's anguish and hatred. He wanted to reassure Kinlafia that they would do everything in their power to track down any survivors, but the chances of there being any survivors didn't sound good. None of these men—himself included, he admitted—really hoped to find anyone alive, but they were determined to try.
And failing that, Balkar chan Tesh reflected grimly, I want the opportunity to exact some serious vengeance.
The company-captain was Ternathian by birth and rearing, but his family hadn't always been. In fact, his father had immigrated to Ternathia with his own parents as a youth. Emigrated, in fact, from Shurkhal. Chan Tesh didn't normally think of himself as Shurkhali, but he'd just discovered, over the last five days, that the blood of his father's people still ran in his veins. If Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr had died in that blood-stained clearing over there, there wasn't a hell deep enough for the enemy to hide in.
Watch yourself, Balkar! he chastised himself dutifully. You're not really some Shurkhali nomad out stalking another clan for vengeance. You're also an imperial Army officer, with a responsibility not just to the Authority, but to His Imperial Majesty, as well. Neither of them need a hotheaded, out-of-control junior officer at the other end of the multiverse committing them to all-out war with another trans-universal civilization!
All of which was true enough, but didn't change a thing about the way he felt. Or about his determination to seek punishment for the individual responsible for this debacle. He was honest enough to admit that he would prefer to squeeze the life out of the bastard himself, with his own bare hands, but he'd settle for having the butcher's own rulers, whoever the hell they were, hang him for the murderer he was. And Balkar chan Tesh was grimly certain that punishment exactly like that would be one of Sharona's demands whenever diplomatic relations were finally established.
"The one thing that really worries me," he said at length, having absorbed everything as well as his weary mind was able to, "is how close they may be to reinforcements of their own. We have no idea how far this fortified swamp portal of theirs is from their own next entry portal. Or of how long a transit chain they may be dangling from."
"You don't think they could be native to that universe?" Kinlafia asked, twitching his head in the general direction of the swamp portal.
"I suppose it's remotely possible," chan Tesh replied. "I think it's extremely unlikely, though. That's an exploration camp over there, Voice Kinlafia. They—"
"Please, Company-Captain," Kinlafia interrupted with another of those pain-filled but genuine smiles, "I'm not really all that fond of formal titles, and I'm a civilian. I don't have any formal standing in your chain of command, and I fully realize how out of my depth I am when it comes to any sort of military operations. So it seems a little silly to be going all formal when you talk to me. My name's Darcel."
"Of course . . . Darcel," chan Tesh said. "And mine's Balkar."
He smiled back at the Voice for a moment, then continued.
"As I was saying, Darcel, that's a small, very crude camp on the other side of that portal. They're still sleeping in tents, and that indicates they've only recently arrived at the portal site. If that were their home world on the other side, surely they'd already have known about the portal and explored it long since. I realize from Platoon-Captain Arthag's scouts' reports that this isn't a very old portal, but it didn't just come into existence last week, either, so—"
He shrugged, and Kinlafia nodded slowly.
"That's pretty much what I've been thinking," he admitted.
"Which brings me back to my original point," chan Tesh said. "How close are they to the next node in their transit chain? For that matter, how quickly did they get their report of what happened back to higher authority? Do they have a relief force on its way already, the same way we're responding to Voice Nargra-Kolmayr's cry for help?"
"I suppose that depends on whether or not they had a Voice of their own with them," Kinlafia said, but chan Tesh shook his head.
"It depends on a more fundamental question than that, Darcel." Kinlafia looked at him, and the company-captain shrugged. "It depends on whether or not they have Voices at all."
"Surely they do—they must!" Kinlafia said, but chan Tesh only shook his head again.
"You're the one who just pointed out to me—quite rightly—that people tend to operate on the basis of what experience tells them is true," he said. "Well, our experience tells us that there have to be Voices on the other side. But do there?"
"I—" Kinlafia paused, then grimaced. "All right, I see your point. I can't conceive of how they couldn't have Talents, but I suppose it's possible. On the other hand, can we risk assuming they don't?"
"Oh, no." Chan Tesh shook his head vigorously. "I intend to assume they do—I'll be a hell of a lot happier to find out I was wrong about that than I would be to find out I was wrong about assuming they didn't! But how quickly they can respond is the question that worries me the most. Well, that and the fact that they don't know any more about us than we know about them."
Kinlafia looked puzzled, and chan Tesh snorted. It was too harsh to be called a laugh.
"The only thing we know about these people is that they've encountered another party scouting an obviously virgin universe and killed or captured them all." Kinlafia winced, but chan Tesh continued calmly. "And that's all they know about us, too. I'll bet you my last pair of boots that they're wondering whether or not our people got a message out, and for a lot of the same reasons. But we're both only groping in the dark out here, and that makes me nervous as hell. People who don't know what's going on have a tendency to make worst-case assumptions . . . and then act on them."
"I agree, Sir." Hulmok Arthag nodded. "They're going to be nervous, too, if not downright spooked. Our people hit these bastards hard. It's obvious from their trail that they had a lot of wounded to transport. You should see all the bandages at the bivouac site we found earlier today! They've got to be wondering what's going to come after them next—and how much worse it's going to be. The fact that they've dug in shows they're at least taking precautions. They're probably ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Just like they did last time," he added bitterly.
"Exactly," chan Tesh agreed. "And let's be honest here—so are we." He looked around the faces in the firelight. "None of us is going to be inclined to take any chances. And, frankly, I'm not going to be exactly brokenhearted if these bastards give us an excuse to blow them straight to hell. Not after what they did to our people. And that worries me, too."
Kinlafia didn't say anything, but the sudden tightening of his face made his reaction to chan Tesh's last few sentences abundantly clear. The company-captain looked at him for a moment, then leaned forward.
"I know you want revenge, Darcel," he said quietly. "Well, so do I. And, as I say, I'm not going to be taking any chances. But if we just charge in there shooting, we're going to make any possibility of establishing real contact with these people even more difficult. And—" he raised his voice slightly as rebellion flickered in Kinlafia's eyes "—if there are any of our people still alive over there, charging in shooting is probably the best way to get them killed after all."
Kinlafia sat back abruptly, and chan Tesh looked at Arthag.
"Our first responsibility is to get any survivors back alive and unharmed. Or, at least, without their suffering any additional harm. If there aren't any survivors," he continued unflinchingly, "then our primary responsibility becomes establishing contact—hopefully without still more violence—and demanding that whoever ordered the attack on our people be held accountable and punished for it. I'm not going to risk any of our people if I can help it, but I'd far rather see the son of a bitch responsible for this arrested and hanged than see this turn into some sort of general war."
Kinlafia looked at him for a long, silent moment, then shook his head.
"I understand what you're saying. Intellectually, I even agree with you. But my heart?" He shook his head again. "Whatever my head says, my heart hopes to hell that these bastards do something—anything—else to give us the excuse to shoot every godsdamned one of them."
He rose, and stood looking down at chan Tesh and Arthag. His expression wasn't really challenging, but it was definitely unyielding, and chan Tesh couldn't blame him a bit for that.
"I'm going to try to get some sleep," the civilian said after a moment. "Good night."
It was said courteously, even pleasantly, but behind the courtesy, Balkar chan Tesh sensed the iron portcullis of the Voice's hatred. The company-captain watched Kinlafia walk away, and wished he didn't understand the Voice's feelings quite as well as he did.
"Sir!"
Chan Tesh reined up as one of Arthag's troopers came cantering back towards the column. The cavalryman reported to his own platoon commander, not chan Tesh, exactly as he should have.
"Yes, Wirtha?" Arthag said as the trooper saluted.
"Sir, we've found another bit they dropped," Wirtha said, and Arthag's eyes narrowed. Then he looked at Parcanthi and Hilovar.
"You two had better go check it out," he said, without checking with chan Tesh. Which, chan Tesh reflected as the Whiffer and Tracer trotted off in Wirtha's wake, was precisely what a good subordinate was supposed to do.
The two officers, accompanied by Darcel Kinlafia, followed the Talents at a bit more leisurely pace. Chan Tesh rather wished that Kinlafia hadn't been present. He'd done his dead level best, tactfully, to suggest that Kinlafia should return to Company-Captain Halifu's fort, since it was essential that they have a Voice available to relay further up the transit chain if something unfortunate—something else unfortunate—happened out here.
Kinlafia, unhappily, hadn't been interested. And, unlike Rokam Traygan, the civilian Voice wasn't under chan Tesh's direct authority. It was obvious that the only way the company-captain could have sent Kinlafia to the rear would have been under armed guard, and he hadn't been able to bring himself to do that in the face of the civilian's obvious pain. So Traygan had been sent back, instead, and Kinlafia was still here. Here waiting for the next, crushing blow if they confirmed Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr's death, and here where his brooding grief and the white-hot smolder of his thinly banked fury hung like a storm cloud in the back of every mind.
But there wasn't much chan Tesh could do about that. Even if he'd been inclined to change his own mind about ordering Kinlafia to the rear, it was too late. Traygan was already more than halfway back to Halifu's fort, which left Kinlafia as the only Voice available at the sharp end.
Since there wasn't anything he could do about that, the company-captain put it out of his disciplined mind and concentrated on Wirtha's discovery. He wasn't very surprised that the scouts had found another bit of debris jettisoned by the people whose trail they were following back to the portal. If these people did have Talents, they appeared to be remarkably unconcerned about anything a good Whiffer or Tracer might be able to discern from their castoffs. Although, to be fair, given the number of wounded the other side was carrying with them, at least some bits and pieces were bound to get away from them.
It was a sign of how good Arthag's people were, though, that they were searching just as diligently this time around as they'd searched the first time they scouted the enemy's trail back to his entry portal.
The three of them caught up just as Hilovar and Parcanthi dismounted and walked across to the object the scout had found. As usual, Hilovar stopped short, allowing Parcanthi first crack at the energy residues, and the Whiffer crouched over whatever it was.
"A soldier dropped this," he said at length. "Not an officer, I don't think, but that's harder to be sure of. He's wounded, staggering. I can See more wounded all around him. Limping—cursing, it sounds like. They're carrying a fair number of men on those strange stretchers of theirs." He grimaced. "I still can't See how they get the damned things to float that way," he complained almost petulantly, then opened his eyes.
"Same as usual, Sir," he said, standing and turning to look up at Arthag. "They were moving slowly, but steadily. It was nearly dark when whoever dropped this dropped it." He indicated the item with his foot, without actually touching it, and glanced at his partner.
"Your turn, Soral."
Hilovar nodded and crouched down in Parcanthi's place. He stared down at what had been dropped, and his brow furrowed.
"What the hell is that?" he muttered under his breath.
It was a small, square object, made of something that looked almost like glass which had been deliberately opaqued. There were markings on it, but what the alien symbols signified was anyone's guess. Hilovar considered it for a moment, then shrugged and picked it up—
—only to let out a startled yelp and drop it back into the leaves on the forest floor.
"What's wrong?" chan Tesh asked sharply, watching the Tracer shake his hand as if he'd just burned it.
"Sorry, Sir." Hilovar looked a bit embarrassed. "It just took me by surprise. It's . . . unnatural."
"That fucking word again," Arthag growled.
"Sorry, Sir," Hilovar said again, glancing back at the scowling Arpathian. "But this thing—it's got the same feel as those accursed ash piles, only stronger. Much stronger. Concentrated as acid, in fact. It prickled my hand so hard it was like being swatted by wasps."
Chan Tesh winced at the image, then sighed.
"Do what you can, Junior-Armsman. We need anything you can dredge out of that thing—whatever it is."
Hilovar nodded, gritted his teeth, and picked it up again. It was obvious that just holding the thing caused him considerable pain, but he endured grimly.
"He's shot through the shoulder," the Tracer said, after a heartbeat or two, in a grating, savagely satisfied tone. "Bleeding into his bandages and hurting like a son of a bitch. Stumbling a good bit. Wishing he could ride on one of the stretchers, it feels like. He keeps looking at them, up ahead."
Then, suddenly, Hilovar shot upright.
"Great gods! There's a woman with 'em!"
"Shaylar?" The name tore from Darcel Kinlafia like a cry of pain, jerking Hilovar out of his concentration, and the Tracer turned to meet his tortured gaze.
"No," the junior-armsman said gently, watching the Voice's face crumple again. "I'm sorry, Darcel. She looked Uromathian—a little thing, pretty as a peach. She was walking beside one of the stretchers. I caught just a tiny glimpse of her. I think the man who dropped this," he held up the surprisingly dense object on his palm, "wanted her to help him."
"A Healer, then?" Arthag mused.
"Sounds like it," chan Tesh agreed, and cocked an eyebrow at Hilovar. "Can you get anything else off of it?"
"No, Sir. Not really," the Tracer said, obviously unhappily. "It's just more of the same. He's just moving slowly—very slowly. And hurting like hell."
"Good!" Kinlafia snarled, and Arthag leaned over in the saddle and gripped his shoulder wordlessly.
"Is there anything else on the ground here?" chan Tesh asked, and Wirtha shook his head.
"No, Sir. We looked around pretty carefully before I reported it to the platoon-captain."
"In that case, may I see it, Soral?"
Hilovar stepped over between chan Tesh's mount and Arthag's magnificent stallion. He held his hand up, allowing the officers to study the object on his palm. Neither of them offered to touch it lest they contaminate it for further Whiffing or Tracing.
"Doesn't look like much, does it?" Arthag murmured, and chan Tesh frowned.
"It looks like glass. But it isn't, is it?"
"It's made from the same thing as those godsdamned 'artillery pieces' of theirs," Darcel said harshly even as Hilovar shook his head.
"Now that's interesting," chan Tesh mused. He glanced at Kinlafia, then back at the Tracer. "It's heavy, isn't it?"
"Yes, Sir. Very dense," Hilovar added. "Surprisingly so, for its size."
"Are those buttons along the side?"
"That's what they look like, Sir," Hilovar agreed.
"Well, I'm damned if I'll try pushing one of them!" chan Tesh snorted.
"If you don't mind, Sir, I'd like to put it into an evidence bag. This thing hurts to hold. I don't know what it's made of, or what's inside it, but it's got that same foul, nasty—unnatural—" he added, meeting Arthag's gaze grimly "—feel. I'm not real anxious to push those buttons, either, Sir, and that's no lie. This thing is damned weird."
"Very well." Chan Tesh nodded. "Put it away. Carefully."
Hilovar pulled a small canvas evidence bag out of his saddlebags and slid the dense little cube into it, then slid both of them into a larger canvas bag slung from his saddle horn, where he'd stored the other bits and pieces they'd found scattered along the trail.
"All right," chan Tesh said then. "We're getting close to that overnight bivouac of theirs, aren't we?"
"Yes, Sir," Wirtha agreed. "About another ten, fifteen minutes. There's quite a bit of stuff scattered around where their fires were. Most of it's little bits and pieces of personal gear, torn uniforms, that kind of thing. And lots of soiled bandages," he added with grim satisfaction.
"Let's move along, then," chan Tesh said.
"Here it is, Sir," Wirtha told chan Tesh shortly afterward, and the company-captain drew rein once more. The area before him, a clearer space along the bank of the same stream which had flowed beside the slaughtered survey crew's day-fort, showed the rings of half a dozen big bonfires and a handful of smaller ones. Even from here, he could see that there was a lot of debris strewn around, including a stained snowdrift of gore-crusted bandages.
"Has anyone been out there yet?" he asked.
"No, Sir," Wirtha replied. "We bypassed it on the way through."
Chan Tesh glanced at Arthag, and the acting platoon-captain shrugged very slightly.
"Nolis and Soral had their hands full with the debris we'd already found at the fallen timbers and at the Chalgyn crew's day-fort, Sir. I'd left them behind to deal with that while I went ahead. By the time we actually found the campsite, we also knew we were hot on their trail, so I took the point and pressed on in hopes we might overtake them. But they got to their own entry portal at least several hours before we did. By the time Nolis and Soral were ready to follow us up, we'd received the order to hold in position and wait for your arrival. It took a while to get a runner forward to my position to recall me to meet you, and Nolis and Soral stayed put in the meantime, as per their orders from Company-Captain Halifu. By the time I got back to camp and could have ordered them forward to the bivouac area here, you were only a couple of hours out."
"I see." Chan Tesh smiled thinly. "So that old saying about order, counter-order, disorder came into play."
"More or less, I'm afraid," Arthag agreed.
"Well, it's no one's fault." Chan Tesh sighed, and looked at Parcanthi and Hilovar. "Go ahead," he said.
The two noncoms saluted, dismounted, and headed forward. Hilovar, as usual, waited while Parcanthi moved into the bivouac area, sweeping from one cold ash pit to another, following the energy residues. It took him the better part of twenty minutes, but when he returned to the waiting officers, his eyes glowed.
"I got some good, solid Whiffs, Company-Captain!" he told chan Tesh. "There's a place a bit further down the creek over there," he pointed, "where something came in during the night."
"Something?" chan Tesh repeated. "What sort of 'something'?"
"Gods alone know," Parcanthi said frankly. "It was big. Dark. I could see firelight on what looked like . . . hide, maybe. If it was hide, the creature under it was big, Sir. Really big, like nothing I've ever seen. But it was too damned dark to get a good look at it. They were loading stretchers onto it, whatever it was."
"Some kind of transport," Arthag muttered. "So, that's what they did." Chan Tesh glanced at him, and the acting platoon-captain grimaced. "We knew they were traveling a little faster when they moved on from here. Didn't notice any particular decrease in the number of their walking wounded, but they were definitely moving more quickly."
"Did they load all the stretchers onto it, whatever it was, Parcanthi?" chan Tesh asked the Whiffer.
"No, Sir. It looked to me like they might've been loading up a dozen or so, like they were taking the most critically wounded out. Whatever it was, and however big it was, I don't think it had enough carrying capacity to take all of them. All I could see was something big and dark that moved off down the creek bed. Then I lost the Whiff."
"Down the creek," Arthag murmured with a frown which drew chan Tesh's attention back to him.
"Something's bothering you," the company commander observed. "What is it?"
"Just that something the size Nolis is describing damned well ought to have left a trail. Once you get to the other side of the creek, the terrain's just like it is on this side. And the underbrush along the stream banks is awfully dense. Anything much bigger than a house cat should've left some sign of its passage when it pushed through it, and we didn't see a thing. Or, rather, we didn't see the tracks of anything but the men on foot we'd been following all along."
"Could it have headed along the streambed to avoid leaving a trail?" chan Tesh asked.
"I suppose it's possible, Sir. I just don't see any reason why it should have. If the party on foot is still headed steadily south, then their destination must lie in that direction. Why should their transport have headed in some other direction?"
"I agree it doesn't make a lot of sense," chan Tesh said. "By the same token, it has to've gone somewhere. Parcanthi Saw it, so we know it was here. Unless you want to suggest that it just flew away, it had to leave tracks somewhere, too, and I know your men's reputation. They wouldn't have missed the sign something that size had to leave behind."
"I don't—" Arthag began, but Parcanthi interrupted, his voice a bit edged.
"I'm sorry, Sir. And I apologize for interrupting, but I hadn't finished my report."
Arthag and chan Tesh both turned back to him, and he waved back in the direction he'd already pointed.
"It was dark, like I said, but I might—I just might—have Seen one of our people among them." Both officers—and Kinlafia—jerked upright in the saddle, eyes narrowing, as he continued. "I could see someone's back, climbing up onto whatever it was. I couldn't see the face, or even get a good look at the hair, because whoever it was, they were wearing some kind of leather hat, or helmet. And they were out beyond the range of the firelight. But I'm positive that they weren't in uniform."
Darcel Kinlafia sucked down air in the sudden silence.
"Could it have been the woman you Saw, Soral?" Arthag asked quietly. "The one you said looked Uromathian. Was she in uniform when you Saw her?"
"She wasn't," Parcanthi said, before Hilovar could speak. "In uniform, I mean. But this wasn't her. I could See her clearly, standing on the bank. She couldn't have been anyone else, not from Soral's description earlier. It looked like she was waiting her own turn to climb up onto whatever it was."
"How . . . how big a person did you See?" Kinlafia whispered harshly.
"Small. Very small. Maybe this high," Parcanthi said, measuring with his hand.
"Oh, gods!" Kinlafia's voice was barely audible, and his throat worked convulsively. The others stared at him as he bowed his head over his saddle bow, eyes tight shut.
"Darcel?" Arthag said, very quietly, after a moment, and the Arpathian's eyes widened as he saw the Voice's face.
"It's her—Shaylar!" Kinlafia said hoarsely. "It's got to be her! Nobody else in the crew was remotely close to that small!"
"I didn't get a very good look at whoever it was," Parcanthi cautioned. "It was dark as sin out there in the brush, and they were climbing up whatever that thing was, which means I couldn't get a good contrast reading. All I could really see were dark shapes against the dark, black wall of hide, or whatever it was. It was a small person, slightly built, in civilian clothing. That much I could See. But I don't know that it was Sharonian clothing. And," he added in the tone of someone desperately trying not to step on the flaming hope in Kinlafia's eyes, "we already know they had at least one other woman—in civilian clothing—with them. If they had one, they might have had two."
All eyes turned to Hilovar, and the Tracer cleared his throat.
"If we can find anything Shaylar was holding, I'll know," he said. "But that's a big if, Darcel. A damned big if."
"I know." Kinlafia's voice was full of grit and gravel. "But I've got reason to hope, now. That's more than I've had ever since I lost contact with her."
"I agree," chan Tesh said, but his own voice was heavy. "If it was Shaylar, though, and she was conscious, up and moving, why didn't she contact you, Darcel? She had to know you'd be waiting, that you were well within her range. For that matter, I happen to know you've been trying to contact her every hour on the hour since you crossed to this side of our own portal."
Kinlafia looked at him, then cleared his own throat.
"She struck her head on something, remember? Hit hard enough to knock her unconscious, at least. And Soral's already said there was damage inside her head, serious damage. She could have been injured badly enough to be rendered Voiceless."
"But if she's hurt that badly, would she have been on her feet and climbing up whatever it was Parcanthi glimpsed out there?" chan Tesh asked.
"I don't know." It came out practically in a groan, and Kinlafia ground his teeth. "Mother Marthea, these monsters are capable of anything! If they're willing to force an injured girl to walk, to climb up this thing, when we know she's suffered a critical head injury, then what in the gods' names else are they willing to do? They could—"
"Stop it!" Chan Tesh's voice rapped out harshly, jerking Kinlafia back around to face him.
"There's no point to this," the company-captain growled, albeit more gently. "You're torturing yourself with visions we have no way to prove or disprove. The people who did this may be a complete unknown, Voice Kinlafia, but one thing we do know; if they have got surviving Sharonians, they're going to want them as healthy as possible."
"You're right," Kinlafia whispered. He sounded unsteady, but he drew another deep breath and slowly nodded. "You're right," he repeated. "I'm sorry. I'm just about out of my mind, worrying and wondering and feeling so gods-cursed helpless. . . ."
"I understand," chan Tesh told him. "But none of us can afford to let anger swamp our thinking."
"Yes, Sir," Kinlafia said quietly. "I'll bear that in mind. The last thing in this universe—or any other—I want to do is something rash that jeopardizes any Sharonian lives. Ours—" he nodded to the column of mounted men "—or that of anyone they've taken with them."
"That's good," chan Tesh said quietly, and smacked him lightly on the shoulder before turning back to his two Talented specialists. "Soral, I think it's your turn in the barrel. See what you can find out."
A half-hour later, the Whiffer and Tracer had completed their reports. They'd managed to pick up quite a lot of additional detail about the individuals who had bivouacked here; very little of it did much good, unfortunately.
"So what do we really know?" chan Tesh asked, looking around the circle of faces around him. He and Arthag had been joined by the Marine officers in command of the two platoons he'd brought along. Hilovar and Parcanthi were both there, too, despite their noncommissioned ranks, available for consultation at need. And, of course, there was also Darcel Kinlafia.
"We know their wounded were hurt even more badly than we thought, Sir," Arthag said. "We know they sent at least ten or twelve of their people out aboard whatever the hells it was Nolis Saw down by the creek, and we know it was godsdamned big."
He grimaced. Guided by the Whiffer, some of his scouts had finally found a few footprints, in among the rocks, gravel, and water-washed sand. Whatever the enemy's transport animal had been, it had been huge. And its feet had been unlike anything Hulmok Arthag had ever seen—or imagined—in his life. It must have been actually standing in the stream itself, which explained the dearth of footprints, but the partial ones they'd found in the end had been frightening to behold. Long-toed, with huge claws, and damned near as long as Arthag was tall. Most maddening of all, they couldn't find a single track heading toward the bivouac . . . or heading away from it, for that matter! It was as if the creature had simply materialized where it was, stood around for a while, and then dematerialized!
"I think Nolis is right that they were getting their most seriously wounded out of here," chan Tesh observed. "Makes sense. But they also sent out the one woman we know was with them, and at least one more civilian, at the same time, and both of them were at least mobile enough to climb up by themselves. So I'd say they were pulling out the people they thought were most valuable, as well as those who were worst hurt. That obviously would have included any of our people who were still alive."
"So what we've really got is just more puzzles," Kinlafia said a bit harshly.
"Any information is always valuable, Voice Kinlafia." An edge of formality frosted chan Tesh's measured reply. Kinlafia looked at him, and the company-captain looked back levelly.
"We know where their encampment is, Darcel," he continued, "and we have it under observation until we can get there and deal with it. In the meantime, any evidence we can get, any information we can cull, may be the one critical piece we need to tell us what to do when we do get there."
Kinlafia looked rebellious for a moment. Then his nostrils flared, and he nodded in unhappy agreement. But it was agreement, chan Tesh noted.
"All right," he said decisively. "I'm going to assume they do have at least one Sharonian prisoner. I may be wrong about that, but they were obviously pulling out someone besides their own wounded. We also know where their entry portal is, and we've got a good notion of how they've dug in on their side of it. I think it's time we took this the rest of the way to them."
Hunger sparkled in Kinlafia's eyes, and chan Tesh felt more than a small flicker of it deep within himself, as well. But he continued in that same, decisive voice.
"Given the size of the only other civilian Parcanthi Saw, I'm also going to operate on the assumption that Voice Nargra-Kolmayr may still be alive. If that's true, then getting her back is our number one priority. Our number two priority, however, is to try to put some sort of lid on this situation before it gets even worse. Much as I'd prefer otherwise, this isn't a punitive expedition. These aren't portal pirates, they aren't claim-jumpers—they aren't anything we've ever encountered before. But they are, clearly, representatives of another trans-universal civilization. So unless they start it, or unless we have convincing evidence that they're holding our people and won't give them up without a fight, I don't want any shooting."
The company-captain could literally taste Kinlafia's disappointment. Arthag and both of the Marine officers seemed just as unhappy, although they were too disciplined to let it show, and chan Tesh allowed himself a small, thin smile.
"I don't want any shooting from our side," he reiterated. "But if it should happen that they start the shooting—for a second time—I intend to be very certain that we end it. Is all of that clearly understood?"
Heads nodded all around, and he nodded back.
"In that case, gentlemen, let's get moving again. I want to be in position to . . . speak to these people before sundown."