The mages surrounded the Portal, each adding his effort to the whole. To the untrained eye, the Portal itself, a dark hole, laced with lightning and surrounded by white fire, could easily have been a living thing. It had a feeling of life; in this case, a rather sinister life, and the movement of its edge added to the effect. To the trained eye, however, the Portal was an inferior specimen of its type. It was the kind of structure a group might build as their first effort at such an undertaking.
As Tremane and his escort came through the doorway and slowed to a walk, the mages surrounding the Portal managed to exert a bit more control over their creation. The boundary stiffened into a proper curving arch, and the dark, energy-laced center faded, replaced by a view of a loading platform and a warehouse wall.
The rest of the handpicked men entered at a quick-march from another door, then took their places on the cobblestone courtyard with drill-team precision. Tremane straightened his uniform tunic and took his place at their head; his aides and all but two of his guards fell back. There were no wasted orders or movements. As they had all rehearsed, the men moved in behind him as he strode toward the Portal and through it.
He had expected the usual disorientation of a Portal crossing, but this was much worse. As his feet touched the floor of the warehouse Portal platform on the other side, he staggered and went to one knee. His men were similarly disoriented as they came through, wavering to one side or another as if they were drunk or faint. One or two clutched their stomachs and turned pale.
He fought back nausea and regained control of himself by hauling himself erect, closing his eyes, and locking his knees until his dizziness passed.
He opened his eyes again as soon as his stomach and balance settled. He and his men stood precisely where he had expected them to be; on a wide loading platform in front of the permanent Portal, under a clear night sky. Two steps down took them to the walkway, and a ramp ran from the walkway to the large wooden loading doors that were directly before them. The walkway led to the office, and predictably there was a light in the office window. This was an Imperial depot; there would be a clerk on duty, no matter what the hour. Tremane pulled his packet of forged and genuine papers from his tunic.
"Stay here until you see the loading doors open," he told the men, then motioned to his guards to follow. He didn't think about the fraud he was about to perpetrate, or he might have shown some sign that not all was correct. He simply walked briskly to the office and pulled open the door, confronting the startled clerk inside with a bland and impassive expression.
He dropped his papers on the desk in front of the middle-aged, stoop-shouldered man, and stepped back, folding his arms over his chest. This place had the familiar look and smell of every Imperial office—the precise placing of desk, stool, and filing cases, the scent of paper, pungent ink, and dust, with a hint of sealing wax and lamp oil.
The clerk gingerly picked up the top paper and read it through; he examined the seal, his face reflecting growing bewilderment, and then read the second. By the time he reached the end of the stack and looked up at Tremane, his face was stiff with shock.
"S-sir—" the clerk stammered, "—s-surely this can't b-be right—"
"I have my orders," Tremane said flatly. "You have yours."
"B-but—these orders—they s-say—you are t-to strip the d-depot—"
Tremane allowed his expression to soften a little. "Friend, with all the Portals down, it's going to be impossible to get supplies in or out of here. We had to make an extraordinary effort just to get this one working, and it won't last past the next storm, if that. Shouldn't the supplies go to men who need them, before they rot or get spoiled by vermin?"
The direct appeal, one to the clerk's good sense and logic, had the desired effect. The man faltered, looking from the papers to Tremane and back again. "But if there are no supplies here, there's nothing for us to do—"
"That's why the last papers authorize you to take indefinite leave," Tremane explained patiently. "Strange things are occurring, and you are stationed out on the edge of the Empire, alone and unsupported. There is no reason for you to suffer this isolation when you could be sent home during this crisis. If the warehouse is empty there will be no need to guard or staff it. Your Emperor knows that you must be anxious about your families, and he knows that without Portals it will probably take you some time to make your way to them. Hence, he has given you indefinite leave."
The clerk picked up the last paper and reread it, his face clearing. After all, it did authorize Tremane to pay him a full year's salary as discharge pay—him and every other clerk here. "There's just the four of us, Commander. Standard depot—and we're all clerks, no—"
"That's quite all right; I brought my own men," he interrupted. "Let's just get those doors open and move out those supplies while we still can."
"Yes, sir!" The clerk jumped to his feet, knocking over his stool in his haste, and hurried over to unlatch the winch that operated the huge loading doors. By clever use of mechanical contrivances, this rather undersized and scrawny individual was able to open doors even the strongest guard would have had difficulty hoisting.
As soon as the doors opened, the men poured in. This, too, had been rehearsed, since every Imperial depot was built to the same pattern. They went straight to the most important items of food and rough-weather supplies. Once those were through the Portal, they would move to items of lower priority: uniforms, bedding, and blankets. And once those had been carried off, they would proceed to strip the depot for as long as the Portal held. Imperial depots were notorious for containing equipment so antique and out-of-date that even a historian would have been hard put to determine the function. Among these, there might be items useful to them in a time when magic had ceased to work. And if nothing else, such items could be converted to their component parts.
Meanwhile, Tremane ordered the clerk to get him the records and to open the lock room at the back of the office containing all records and the Imperial gold stores normally held to pay for deliveries from civilian merchants and for pay shipments to the troops. Out of that, he counted out the discharge pay for the four clerks, putting the small, wafer-thin gold coins up in pay packets and neatly labeling each with the man's name and his own seal.
"As of this moment, you are free to go," he said kindly as he handed the clerk his particular packet. "We can carry on from here. If you have a stable, help yourself to mounts and baggage animals on my authority."
"Thank you, Commander," the clerk replied, his face now full of eagerness. He shuffled backward, toward the door, as he spoke. "I've got a long way to travel—perhaps I ought to make an early start of it—"
He could not back out of there fast enough, and Tremane thought he knew why. Every Imperial clerk indulged in a certain amount of graft; reselling Imperial supplies and the like, recording that he had paid more for deliveries than he'd actually given out. This man wanted to. get out of reach before Tremane compared the lists of what should be there with what actually was.
Little did he know that Tremane didn't care. Of course the mice would have nibbled the crust; most of the loaf was still there, and that was what mattered.
He had his own reason for wanting to be rid of the clerks. When—or if—the authorities did descend on this place, if there was no one here, that would confuse the situation still further. Somehow the authorities would have to decipher where the clerks had gone before they could find out whose seal was on the pay packets—assuming that the clerks kept the packets. He intended to take his papers with him when he left. All the authorities would have was a looted warehouse, but no idea who was responsible. Unless, of course one or more agents managed to get "left" behind.
Even if that happened, it would still take the agents a long time to reach the capital and the Emperor. They might not make it. Conditions could be bad enough here to prevent even an experienced agent from reaching his contact. All of the spy masters relied on Portals and mage-crafted messengers to get informati
on to and from their agents. Without those, an agent might not even know who his contact was!
Meanwhile, his guards were taking the gold through and handing it over to the custody of his other guards, to be placed under double guard and lock in the strong room. Gold was heavy; the men could not move much at a time. But, as he had hoped, there was enough there to pay his entire army for a year. That would give him the time he needed to win their personal loyalty.
Once the gold was all across, he directed his two guards to join the rest of the men in stripping the warehouse to the bare floor, walls, and ceiling. There were even stores of lumber here, and if he got the chance, if the Gate held long enough, he'd take those.
They had been at this task for long enough that the vital supplies were all through; now the men just made a human chain, passing boxes, bundles, crates, and barrels through without bothering to check what was in them. He had clerks of his own that could inventory the mass of supplies at leisure.
While they worked, Tremane helped himself to the warehouse records. What he found there confirmed his fears and his hopes; the personnel here had been in disarray for weeks, without orders, contact from their superiors, or any sign that the Empire still existed. They had no idea what was going on; all they knew was that the Portals suddenly went dead, and that there were strange things going on outside the safe walls of the fortified depot. What he found indicated a certain amount of panic on their part, and he didn't blame them. In their place, he'd have been panicking, too.
The huge warehouse echoed strangely as the contents were emptied; the torches his men placed to light their way made oddly-moving shadows among the racks and shelves. He wished there might be time to loot the small stable that was surely attached to this post—but on the other hand, the four clerks would probably need every beast there, just to get themselves and their own goods home safely. It wouldn't do to be greedy, he chuckled inwardly.
The Portal showed no signs of deteriorating, and this warehouse was more than half emptied. As he checked on the progress of his men, he caught sight of another door where he had not expected one, and he stopped dead to stare at it.
Another door? Could it be possible that this depot was a complex of warehouses?
He ran across the dusty floor and wrenched the door open. Enough light came from the torches behind him to show him a sight to make his heart leap.
Grain. Tin barrel after barrel of grain—meant for horses, for cavalry, but perfectly edible by humans.
And here was the answer to the dilemma of how to keep both town and garrison alive. This would buy him the loyalty of the town, especially if the winter ran long and hard and supplies ran short. The farmers had been complaining that the weather had been bad and the harvest poor, and he had been assuming their complaints were nothing more than the usual. Every farmer he had ever known had complained about the weather and the harvest—they always did, and never would admit to having a good year.
But what if this time the complaints were genuine? He had seen the weather and the state of the fields for himself. How could he have thought that the harvest would be normal?
Because I didn't dare think otherwise, or I would have given up.
Quickly he hailed half of the men over to this new storehouse, telling them to haul the grain but leave the hay bales that would also be here for the very last. Hay was not a priority, but if there was time, why not take it, too?
I need more men. It was a risk, bringing still more men—men who had not been checked beforehand—across an unstable Portal, but the gain was worth the risk. Almost certainly some of these would arrange to be left behind. There would be agents among them. He didn't care.
He ran out to the Portal and sent a message across with one of the guards; Sejanes was no fool and he should know how many more would be safe to send across.
He went back to the men—but now it was to join them in a frenzy of hauling. He joined the line, working side-by-side with one of his own bodyguards and a man whose name he didn't even know for certain. When the man cursed him for clumsiness when he dropped a box, and cursed him again for being slow, he kept silent. It was more important to get one more box across that Portal than it was to maintain the distinction of Commander and subordinate. He sensed, rather than saw, more men making a second line; at the time he had his own hands full and sweat running into his eyes.
He had never done so much hard physical labor in his life. His muscles and joints begged him for the mercy of a rest, his lungs burned, and his throat and mouth were as parched as if he were crossing the desert. There was no rest; his line was down to transporting the lumber at the back of the warehouse, but the other line still had grain to move.
There was light outside now; at some point dawn had arrived, and he had missed it. How had Sejanes managed to hold the Portal up so long? The poor mages would be only semiconscious for a week after this!
His line broke up at that point; there was nothing more to move. Half of them went to the sides of the warehouse to try to get the few large objects—dismantled siege engines—that could not be hauled by a single man. The rest joined the grain line, but now the grain line was actually hauling hay bales!
At just that moment, a whistle shrilled from the Portal; the signal that the mages had held it as long as they could. Tremane had drilled his men in this, too; every one of them dropped what he was holding and sprinted for the Portal at a dead run. The new men who had not been drilled took their cue from the rest. He joined them; as they reached the outside they formed into four running ranks, since the Portal was only large enough for four abreast to cross at once. Those four ranks continued to race for the stone arch that marked this side of the Portal.
Despite his care, he knew that when he called for more men, he had allowed many agents to cross over, and now some of the men would deliberately lag behind, to remain when the Portal collapsed. There would be agents of the Emperor and of his own personal enemies among them. That would be fine; no one else knew that his orders were forged.
In a way, he wished them no ill, for if this Imperial depot had been left so completely on its own, that did not speak well for conditions in the Empire as a whole. They would have to somehow find transportation, work their way across several client states, and only then would they reach anything like solid Imperial territory. Faced with such a situation, he would give up and find a place to wait out the situation; they might well do the same.
And as for the rest who lagged behind—they had worked with a will, and he could not find it in his heart to condemn them for snatching the chance to stay on home ground. Without a doubt, the Empire would need them as much or more than he would.
And every man who stays here is one less mouth to feed—as well as one less agent that might turn to sabotage in the absence of other orders.
He was one of the last men through, and the instability in the Portal was directly reflected in the effect the crossing had on him. He landed on the other side in a tumble, unable to stand, his head reeling, his stomach racked with nausea. He lay on his side in a helpless heap for a moment until someone dragged him clear.
He opened his eyes and regretted doing so; the courtyard was spinning around him and the bright sunlight lanced into his skull like a pair of knives thrust into his eye sockets. He closed his eyes again, hastily, and simply lay where he was, waiting for the sickness to pass.
"It's coming down!" someone shouted, voice hoarse with exhaustion.
"Let it go—we can't wait any longer!" That was Sejanes' voice; the old man must have counted noses and come up short. "They'll be all right over there—drop the pattern, before it burns us all away!"
He opened his eyes again, just in time to see the Portal collapse, folding in on itself until it was a single point of bright, white light that burned for a moment, then crackled out.
The illness had passed enough to let him rise; he found that he was in a corner, dragged there by some wise soul on this side of the Portal. That was a help, for with
the aid of the wall he was able to get to his feet and lean against firm support until the rest of his equilibrium returned.
Finally, when he thought he could present a reasonable front, he walked slowly out into the courtyard full of collapsed men, collapsing mages, and heaps of supplies.
The guards he had left here were still standing; he sent one of them off for help. "Stretchers and stretcher bearers," he directed. "Everyone down should be taken to his own quarters and given full sick leave for at least one day. Have the Healers look at them." He looked around the courtyard at the supplies still there, and frowned. They had emptied two warehouses—why wasn't this courtyard stuffed with supplies?
The guard correctly interpreted that frown. "As soon as things started coming across, Sejanes sent for more men to move the supplies by wagon out to storage, Commander," the man said. "They'll be back shortly."
Tremane's frown cleared. "Good. And the clerks are making inventories?"
"Yes, sir. Everything is as you ordered, Commander, except—" the guard could no longer suppress his grin, "—except that Sejanes held the Portal open longer than even he thought possible. Commander, you did it!"
Now, for the first time in weeks, he relaxed enough to reply to the guard's grin with one of his own. "Now, let's not tempt the Unkindly Ones with our hubris. We were lucky. We have no idea how long those supplies sat there, or what condition they're in. Half of them could be useless."
The guard nodded sagely. "Indeed, Commander. Shall I send for your sedan chair as well as the litter bearers?"
Tremane was about to refuse—he had scarcely used his sedan chair a handful of times in the past year—but a sudden wave of dizziness made him reconsider quickly and nod. "Do that. I'll be over by Sejanes."
He managed to get as far as his old mentor before needing to sit down, and he succeeded in seating himself on a box without making it look as if he had collapsed. The old man was in about the same shape as Tremane—which in itself was remarkable, given the strain under which the mages must have been laboring. Sejanes lay flat on his back on the cobblestones, and acknowledged Tremane's presence with only a wave of one hand.
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