Chief Sword Otwal Threbuch hated the taste of defeat.
He couldn't begin to count of the number of missions he'd carried out successfully over the course of his career. He'd cheated death ten ways from hell, dragged back commanding officers held together by little more than bandages and stitches, and somehow—some way—always gotten the job done.
But as he lay stretched out flat on his belly along the tree limb, staring at the tantalizingly close disk of the swamp portal, he tasted the most bitter failure of his life. His worst nightmare was right under his nose, and there was literally no way for him to warn Hundred Olderhan it was coming.
He'd done exactly what the hundred had instructed him to do. Neither he nor Emiyet Borkaz, the First Platoon trooper with him, had found any sign of a messenger as they left the site of the fight at the toppled timber behind and headed for what they hoped was the other side's entry portal.
That entry portal had turned out to be a monster when they finally found it. Threbuch had never seen—never imagined—one that size. It had to be at least thirty miles across, and as he'd gazed through it at the rain-soaked forest on the far side, he'd mentally apologized to Magister Halathyn and Magister Kelbryan for every doubt he'd cherished about their newfangled portal-finding gadget. If this wasn't a class eight portal, it could only be because it was a class nine.
Its size had been part of the problem. Threbuch had never before been assigned to scout anything that size with only two men. Finding the fort from which the survey party must have come had taken far longer than he'd liked, but the fall of night had prevented them from following the back trail all the way that first day. They'd been forced to bivouac overnight, and a cold and cheerless night it had been without so much as a palm-sized campfire.
The next day, they'd come within a hair's breadth of being snapped up themselves by a party of what were obviously mounted scouts. Threbuch and Borkaz had been crossing an open space left by some long-ago fire, and they'd been damned lucky to realize what was happening in time to disappear into a handy thicket of brambles. Threbuch had taken the opportunity to study the horsemen carefully, and he hadn't liked what he'd seen one bit.
Their horses weren't much to talk about, at least. They didn't look as if they'd been enhanced at all, although they appeared well cared for and were clearly well trained. The men on their backs had been another matter entirely. These men were obviously soldiers. They wore distinctive uniforms, with dark gray tunics and green breeches tucked into high cavalry boots, which blended into the forest surprisingly well . . . and made it totally clear that the people the Andaran Scouts had fought and defeated—slaughtered, he'd thought, forcing himself to face the truth—had, indeed, been civilians.
He'd made himself put that thought aside, concentrating on the job in hand, and his jaw had set hard. There were three men, clearly the point of a larger column, moving with an alert, competent professionalism Threbuch had never seen bettered. He hadn't been able to see their faces, but the set of their shoulders and their overall body language had shouted both their focus and their fury, which had pretty much answered the question about whether or not they knew something had happened to the survey party. He still didn't have a clue how they'd found out, but if that wasn't a rescue party with blood in its eye, he'd never seen one.
They'd carried shoulder weapons like those of the civilians the Scouts had already encountered, although these were sheathed in saddle scabbards. They also carried more of the smaller, belt-sized version, and the first swords Threbuch had seen from the other side. Cavalry sabers, of course, but the swords—like the shoulder weapons—were saddle-carried. And unlike the shoulder weapons, it didn't look as if they were intended to be gotten at quickly. Small wonder. If he'd had ranged weapons as good as theirs, he'd have sold his own sword for beer money!
The chief sword had lain beside Borkaz, watching as the sweep men rode past. The horsemen rode with alert eyes, obviously taking little for granted, but it was apparent that they were far more focused on where they were going than upon where they were. They moved steadily on, without ever approaching the thicket in which Threbuch and Borkaz hid.
Threbuch had stayed exactly where he was, despite the impatience he had sensed from Borkaz, after the trio had disappeared along the same trail he'd been following in the other direction. Borkaz was too disciplined to actually complain, but he'd obviously hovered on the point of doing so when, several minutes later, the rest of the column had come into view.
Forty men, Threbuch had estimated, all of them with those same deadly shoulder weapons. They'd outnumbered Hundred Olderhan's remaining combat effectives by four-to-one, and they'd been accompanied by pack mules. Threbuch had no idea what had been on those mules. Rations, undoubtedly, some of it, but was that all? Or did they have yet more of their demonic weapons—weapons a mere civilian survey crew couldn't have matched—hidden away in those innocent looking packs?
There'd been no way to know, just as there'd been no possible way Threbuch and Borkaz could have beaten those mounted men back to Hundred Olderhan. The thought had been gall-bitter, but Sir Jasak was as coolheaded—and smart—as any junior officer Threbuch had ever served. He'd already be pushing to get back to their base camp at the swamp portal as quickly as possible. The only thing Threbuch could do was hope he made it before the pursuing cavalry force came right up his backside.
Well, that and continue with the mission the hundred had given him in the first place.
Once the patrol had passed, he and Borkaz had eased back from the immediate trail and continued far more cautiously to the north. They'd become aware of the huge portal shortly after dawn on the second day, although it had been mid-morning by the time they'd finally spotted the fort on the portal's far side.
That had been an unpleasant discovery, too.
The fort was little more than a rough, three-quarters-finished wooden palisade around a central courtyard. Threbuch must have seen hundreds of similar forts in his career. But this fort was a hornet's nest of activity, despite the rain falling steadily across it. There weren't as many men as he might have expected in the uniformed fatigue parties laboring on its construction, but peering through the unfinished, open gate from the dry side of the portal, Threbuch had seen additional buildings—barracks, obviously—going up. No doubt the prospect of getting watertight roofs over their own heads could have explained the workers' industry, but there'd been far too few troops in sight for the amount of bunk space Otwal saw going up.
"Graholis, Chief Sword!" Borkaz had muttered beside him. "Are they expecting a godsdamned regiment?"
"It's not that bad," Threbuch had replied. "It looks bigger to us because we're both scared shitless at the moment. Actually, it's probably not much bigger than one of our battalion forts."
"Whatever you say, Chief," Borkaz had said doubtfully.
They'd spent a while studying the fort. The bad news was all that barracks space; the good news was that, at the moment, they didn't seem to have the troops to put into those barracks. The more they'd looked at it, the more Threbuch had come to the conclusion that the column which had almost snapped up him and Borkaz must have represented virtually all the combat strength immediately available to the other side. If that were true, and if the hundred did beat that cavalry column through the portal, he should be in pretty good shape.
"All right," he'd said finally to Borkaz, turning his back—not without difficulty—on the fort and its work parties. "We've found their fort, and we already know their cavalry is past us. Not much we can do about that. So the next priority is figuring out just how godsdamned big this thing—" he'd waved an arm at the rainy half-disk of another universe looming over them "—really is. And if it comes to it, we're going to need a better idea of the terrain on both sides."
Borkaz had nodded, although he hadn't looked particularly happy. Threbuch hadn't blamed him, either. Neither of them had really anticipated a portal this size. Doing even a cursory tactical sweep was going to take the two of them at least a couple of days, and probably longer.
"I don't like it," Threbuch had continued, "but I think we're going to have to split up. We'll each take half the rations, then you'll sweep that way—" he'd pointed southeast; this portal's axis was aligned in a generally southeast-northwest direction "—and I'll go the other. How's the charge on your RC?"
Borkaz had reached into his pack and pulled out his reconnaissance crystal, which looked pretty much like any other PC, except for the bracket designed to allow him to affix it to the front of his helmet. He'd pressed a button on the side of the glassy cube and studied the readout for a moment.
"I've got ninety-six hours, Chief," he'd reported.
"Good. It looks like this fort's about right square in the center, so even if this thing's as big as it looks from the sky arc, it can't be much more than fifteen miles from here to the far edge in either direction. It shouldn't take more than a day or so for one man to travel that far, so you'll be able to leave it on record the whole way."
"I could do it in less than—" Borkaz had begun, but Threbuch had cut him off.
"Maybe you could, but you're going to be operating solo, with nobody to watch your back, and we have to get this one right. We don't fuck up this time, understood? So you take your time, and you hole up somewhere at night, and you don't cross over to the other side until you're at least five miles from their fort. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Chief Sword," Borkaz had said, rather more formally than usual.
"Good. Then get moving. I'll meet you here tomorrow afternoon. If you don't turn up in three days—or if I don't—then we both head back to camp on our own. And for gods' sake, be careful!"
That had been three days ago, and Otwal Threbuch had cursed himself long, soundly, inventively, and viciously for that delay when he and Borkaz had discovered what else had come through that portal while they'd been elsewhere.
The sweep of the portal itself had gone well. Once they'd been away from the immediate vicinity of the other side's fort, they'd both crossed over into the rain-soaked forest on the far side. Neither of them had enjoyed their drenching, although they'd at least been able to withdraw back to the dry side for occasional rests, but the recon crystals attached to their helmets had faithfully recorded everything either of them had seen after they'd been activated. In fact, the crystals had undoubtedly seen things neither Threbuch nor Borkaz had realized they were looking at. The Intelligence pukes would be able to generate detailed topological maps of the area in the portal's immediate vicinity and for as much as a mile or two on either side of it, once they got their hands on those RCs.
Threbuch had very carefully backed up each crystal into the unused memory of the other. If something happened to him, Borkaz would have the complete record, and vice versa. Personally, the chief sword intended to see to it that no one needed his backup, but a man never knew.
That thought had come back to haunt him as he realized that the people for whom the fort's barracks had been intended had obviously been closer than he'd allowed himself to hope. The trail he and Borkaz had followed to reach the portal was beginning to look like a godsdamned highway from all the traffic passing over it. He hadn't been able to make any sort of hard estimate from the hoof-churned leaves and mud, but it had looked to him as if at least another couple of hundred horsemen must have followed the original column. They couldn't have been more than a few hours—a day, at the outside—ahead of the chief sword and his companion, but that had still put them between Threbuch and Hundred Olderhan.
And left Threbuch no possible way to warn the hundred what was coming.
So he and Borkaz had done the only thing they could do. They'd headed back through the forest in the ground-covering lope of the Andaran Scouts, despite their fatigue and the fact that neither of them had eaten very well over the past several days. Threbuch was no spring chicken these days, and that fact had been mercilessly ground home by the pain in his legs and the fire in his lungs. Yet he'd actually managed to set the pace for the much younger Borkaz, and—thanks to their personal navigation crystals—they'd been able to cut directly across country through the woods, avoiding the considerably longer trail everyone else was following.
It had been a nightmare run, but they'd almost won the race.
Almost, unfortunately, wasn't good enough, Threbuch thought.
He growled yet another mental curse, and only a lifetime of discipline prevented him from slamming his fist into the branch on which he lay with bone-breaking force. There had, indeed, been close to two hundred men—maybe more—in that second column . . . and every damned one of them was between him and Borkaz and the portal.
What the fuck is the Hundred thinking about? he demanded of himself. Where are the godsdamned sentries? Where are the pickets?
It didn't make any sense at all. The bastards out there in the woods between Threbuch and the portal were good, no question. The chief sword had almost walked right into one of them without even seeing him. Only the gods' own luck had saved him, when the fellow—whose uniform was as different from that of the cavalry troopers Threbuch had seen as the chief sword's own—turned his head and whistled a birdcall as good as any Threbuch might have produced himself. Any temptation the chief sword might have felt about picking the sentry off and slipping through the gap it would create had vanished when replies had come back from three different positions, all within easy sight range of the first.
But good as they might have been, they should never have been able to get this close to the portal, with their infantry deployed in what was obviously a well laid out skirmish line, without being spotted. They certainly weren't any better in the woods than the Andaran Scouts, and Threbuch couldn't imagine what sort of idiocy could have prevented Hundred Olderhan from posting pickets to prevent them from doing exactly that.
Yet something obviously had kept the hundred from taking that elementary precaution, and getting himself or Borkaz captured or killed wouldn't do any good at all. The sound of one of the enemy's weapons might alert the troopers on the other side of the portal. It might not, too, and there was no guarantee these people would be stupid enough to use their thunder weapons. If there were enough of them—and gods knew there were—they could take him and Borkaz without firing a shot.
Besides, in the cold, hard calculus of military reality, the information he and Borkaz were bringing back was worth more than Hundred Olderhan's entire company. That monster portal had to be reported, and the detailed terrain scans he and Borkaz had carried out would be literally priceless if it came to operations against the portal's defenders.
And so there was nothing he could do but lie here, less than a thousand yards from the portal, and pray that the earthworks he could see on the other side might actually give the Andaran Scouts enough of an edge to survive.
Hulmok Arthag stood with Balkar chan Tesh in the ravine he'd told the company-captain about while two sections of the mortar company set up their heavy weapons behind them.
There were four of the ugly, deadly weapons in the ravine, and Platoon-Captain Morek chan Talmarha, the company's commanding officer, was personally overseeing their emplacement. He'd sent the two tubes of the company's third section to set up farther to the east, under Senior-Armsman Quelovak chan Sairath, his senior noncom. The terrain was less suitable there, but the weapons had a range of over six thousand yards, and chan Talmarha had managed to find a suitable spot to emplace chan Sairath's weapons out of sight of anyone on the other side. Chan Tesh would have preferred not to split them up, but he couldn't cover both aspects of the portal from a single firing position.
Arthag had been surprised when he saw the mortars attached to chan Tesh's column. The acting platoon-captain had expected the three-inch weapons which were the norm for mobile units of the PAAF; what chan Tesh had actually brought along was the heavy four-and-a-half-inch version. The three-inch weighed only a tad over eighty pounds in firing position; the four-and-a-half-inch weighed almost three hundred, and it was a pain to pack into position on mule back. Pack animals couldn't carry as many of the far heavier rounds, either, so the bigger weapon was more likely to be used from a fortified position, or when it was possible to move using wheeled transport. In fact, that was the role intended for them when they'd been sent along with chan Tesh in the first place.
There was no question which was the more effective weapon in action, though. Mortar rounds were thinner-walled than conventional artillery shells, which meant a higher percentage of their total weight could be given up to explosive filler. The three-inch mortar's round weighed less than seven pounds, with an explosive filler of only one and a half pounds; the four-and-a-half-inch round weighed twenty-seven pounds, with five and a half pounds of filler. Both were designed to fly apart along prefragmented lines when they exploded, but whereas the three-inch had a lethal radius of about twenty-five feet, the four-and-a-half-inch's lethal radius was forty feet.
Under the circumstances, and given the horrific effect of the other side's inexplicable weapons, Arthag didn't blame chan Tesh a bit for his choice of support weapons.
The mortar crews were busy leveling the base plates, using the spirit levels built into the weapons' bipods, while the Marines chan Tesh had detailed to support them unloaded the mule-packed, finned, base-fused rounds and stacked them neatly in place. Arthag watched them, then looked up as Petty-Armsman Loumas slithered down the side of the ravine and saluted.
"You wanted me, Sir?" he said to chan Tesh.
"Yes." Chan Tesh nodded. "What can you tell me?"
"Not much, I'm afraid, Sir," Loumas replied. "This close, the portal energies are playing hell with my Talent." He grimaced. "I could probably actually give you a better Plot from a half-mile back or so. I don't think there's anyone out there, but what I'm Seeing is way too 'foggy' for me to guarantee it. And," he admitted, "I may be feeling that way because there wasn't anyone the last time I Looked."
"I'm inclined to think you're probably right," chan Tesh said, making a mental note of the Plotter's awareness of the danger preconception posed. It wasn't every man, Talented or not, who could keep that in mind. And in chan Tesh's experience, it was even less common for a man to admit that it might be happening to him.
"If they'd been going to put sentries out at all, they'd have already done it," chan Tesh continued, thinking aloud.
"They did send those work parties across this morning, Sir," Arthag pointed out, and chan Tesh nodded in acknowledgment.
"There's not exactly very much firewood on their side," he pointed out. "I'd be sending out wood-cutting parties, too, in their place. But Chief-Armsman chan Hathas kept a close eye on them, and according to his count, all of them are back in camp. They didn't leave any of them behind on our side."
"True enough, Sir," Arthag conceded. "All the same, I wish they hadn't done it. I'd give half a month's pay if chan Hathas had been able to get a better look at whatever the hells that thing was!"
"Me, too," chan Tesh admitted.
The timing on the enemy's wood-cutting expedition couldn't have been worse. With only a handful of men to keep an eye on things, Chief-Armsman chan Hathas had been forced to spread them out if he wanted to keep both sets of fortifications under observation. The virtually simultaneous emergence of work parties from each aspect of the portal had forced him to pull back in obedience to his orders to avoid contact until chan Tesh could bring up the main body. Chan Hathas had managed the maneuver flawlessly, as was only to be expected out of a noncom of his experience, but he'd had to give up his initial, carefully chosen vantage points. Which meant he'd had only the most frustrating glimpses of some huge, metallic-colored creature which had apparently both arrived and departed in the course of no more than an hour or two. His angle of vision through the portal had been too acute for him to see more, but it was fairly obvious from his report that it must have been whatever they'd already used to evacuate their more critically wounded.
There'd been no sign of it at all since shortly after midday, and that had been enough to tighten Darcel Kinlafia's mouth into a hard, grim line. Chan Tesh understood that, but the truth was that if the other side had decided to send any prisoners somewhere else, they would probably have done it long before this.
Of course, they may not have decided to move them elsewhere at all, the company-captain mused.
Platoon-Captain Parai chan Dersal, the senior of his two Marine platoon commanders, came trotting down the ravine and saluted.
"We're in position on both sides, Sir," he said.
"Good." Chan Tesh smiled slightly. "May I take it from the lack of gunfire, shouts, and screams that you managed your deployment without anyone on the other side noticing?"
"I believe you can take that, Sir, yes," chan Dersal replied, absolutely deadpan, and chan Tesh heard Arthag chuckle slightly, despite the tension hovering in the ravine.
"There is one thing, though, Sir," chan Dersal said. "I was talking to Chief-Armsman chan Hathas. I wanted his advice on the best positions for my sharpshooters. In the course of the conversation, he mentioned that one of his men had reported seeing a civilian in the camp."
Darcel Kinlafia stirred slightly behind chan Tesh, but the Marine officer went on before the Voice could say anything.
"He said it was a man, definitely not a woman, and that he seemed to be moving about freely, which a prisoner wouldn't have been."
"That's right," Arthag said. "He didn't get a very good look at the fellow, but whoever he was, he definitely wasn't in uniform."
"Well, I think I got a better look at him when I was moving my people into position," chan Dersal said, touching the field glasses cased at his side. "He's a civilian, all right. Looks like a Ricathian. Unlike anyone else I saw in there, he's not armed, either, and he's old, Sir. Quite old, I'd say."
The Marine gazed at chan Tesh expressionlessly, but the company-captain knew what the man was really saying. They were both Imperial Ternathian officers, trained in the same tradition, after all.
"I take your point, Platoon-Captain," chan Tesh said, speaking a bit more formally. "And if you saw one obvious civilian in there, there may be more we haven't seen. I take that point, as well." He turned so that he could look at both Arthag and chan Dersal. "Pass the word to all of our people that there are probable civilians in that camp. No one is to take any unnecessary chances, but we're also not out here to butcher noncombatants."
"They did," Kinlafia muttered in a barely audible voice, and chan Tesh looked at him sternly.
"Perhaps they did. But we aren't them, and neither the PAAF nor the Ternathian Empire massacres civilians." Kinlafia still looked rebellious, and chan Tesh frowned. "I understand your point, Darcel," he said firmly, "but I also have to point out that your people most definitely were not unarmed. Civilians, yes, but not unarmed, and all the evidence is that they gave at least as good as they got until the artillery opened up. We're not going to do anyone any good if we kill people who are neither armed nor shooting back just for the sake of vengeance. More than that, I'm not going to let my people turn into the very thing I'm out here hunting down. Is that clear?"
Kinlafia glowered, and chan Tesh cocked his head to one side.
"I asked if that was clear, Darcel. I want your word on it. If you can't give it, I'll have you disarmed and held at the horse lines."
"It's clear," Kinlafia said, after a moment. "And you have my word." He grimaced. "Probably a good thing you do, really. I'd like to still like myself a few months from now."
"I'd like for you to, too," chan Tesh said with a little smile, but then his smile faded and he turned his attention back to Arthag.
"You're sure you want to be the one who does this, Hulmok?" he asked quietly.
"Sir, you're the one who said we have to give them a chance to deal fairly with us." The Arpathian shrugged. "I happen to agree with you, for several reasons. But if we're going to try for a peaceful contact, it ought to be an officer, and Bright Wind and I are the best team for it, anyway. With all due modesty, I'm the best rider you've got, and Bright Wind is the best horse you've got."
"All right." Chan Tesh sighed. He wasn't happy about picking anyone to take on this particular duty, but as he'd told Arthag, it had to be done. What had happened to the Chalgyn Consortium team could have been an accident. That sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen with properly trained and disciplined troops, but chan Tesh had seen enough monumental fuck-ups in Ternathian and PAAF service to know it could happen anyway, even to the best outfit in the multiverse. So it was time to see what happened under more controlled conditions, when panic couldn't be blamed for the other side's reactions. Which, unfortunately, meant sending someone in harm's way, and Arthag was right about the logical choice.
The company-captain looked at Arthag and chan Dersal, then up at the sky. The sun was settling steadily towards the western horizon, but there were at least a couple of hours of daylight left. There was time enough, he judged, and he couldn't count on these people to stay fat, happy, and stupid forever.
He gave his mortar sections one last glance. Chan Talmarha gave him a pumped fist sign, indicating readiness, and he nodded to himself.
"All right, Parai," he said. "Get back to your platoon. Hulmok, you come with me. I think we'll send you in from the west. At least that way they'll have the sun in their eyes if they decide to do something outstandingly stupid."