by David Weber
Kersai was young for the responsibility of dealing with that sort of "minor variation," but he was also smart and hardworking, and from everything chan Tergis had been able to discern, he'd done a first-rate job. In fact, he, his wife Raysith, and Syrail were going to be heading back to Sharona in just a few days, at least three months ahead of their original schedule, for a well-deserved vacation and promotion. Chan Tergis had already discussed young Syrail's need for additional training with his parents, and although neither Kersai nor Raysith was very strongly Talented, they were obviously delighted by his enthusiastic praise for what Syrail had already accomplished.
Chan Tergis was glad. The truth was that he was going to miss the boy, and he'd given the lad his own bronze falcon badge as a going-away gift. Technically, Syrail wouldn't be allowed to wear it until he'd passed at least his second-stage training and been certified, but chan Tergis had a spare, and he'd known it would be the perfect gift even before he watched those brown eyes go huge and round with delight.
And I can use anything good that happens these days, he told himself.
His expression tightened at the reflection. There was still no word from Roakm Traygan or Shansair Baulwan. In fact, there was still no word from Erthek Vardan, for that matter, and there damned well ought to have been by now. He knew Regiment-Captain Velvelig was more perturbed by the ongoing silence than he'd chosen to let on, and so was chan Tergisx. He was beginning to wonder if something rather more serious hadn't happened to Erthek. Fatal accidents were scarcely unknown out here on the frontier, where a man might be bitten by a snake, mauled by a bear, break his neck in a fall, or be crushed when a falling horse rolled over on him. True, things like that happened rather less frequently to Voices than to others, given the (relatively) sedentary nature of their duties, but they could happen. And he was becoming unhappily certain that he was going to discover that something a lot more serious than a simple allergy or the flu had happened to young Erthek.
Stop borrowing trouble! he scolded himself. If you find out it was nothing serious after all, think how stupid you're going to feel.
Janaki chan Calirath straightened in his seat and stretched hugely as the abbreviated, shabby train hissed and banged to a halt at the Fort Salby station. The standard seats in the Trans-Temporal Express's thirdclass carriages hadn't been designed to fit Caliraths. And the seats the coin-counters in the TTE home offices had seen fit to put into the carriages on their work trains made third-class carriages seem palatial by comparison. Still, as he and Chief-Armsman chan Braikal had already agreed, even this beat the hell out of a saddle.
He snorted with amusement at the thought, then glanced at chan Braikal.
"Go ahead and get them organized to detrain, Chief. I'll find out where we need to put them."
"Yes, Sir."
Janaki left that task in chan Braikal's more than capable hands and climbed down onto the sun-blasted boardwalk of the Fort Salby rail station. It wasn't the first time he'd been here, but the place hadn't gotten much cooler between visits.
There was one notable change, he noticed, and he was glad he'd been warned about it before he saw the Uromathian cavalry standard for the first time. Given the traditional relationship between Ternathia and Uromathia-and his own … unanticipated marital prospects-he wasn't overjoyed to see the crossed crimson sabers on a black field flying from one of the flagpoles on Salby's parade ground.
"Platoon-Captain chan Calirath?" a voice said, and he turned towards the speaker.
"Yes, Sir!" he said crisply, coming to attention and saluting the dark-complexioned company-captain with the pronounced Shurkhali accent.
"Stand easy, Platoon-Captain," the company-captain said dryly and extended a hand. "I'm Orkam Vargan, the XO. And I'm glad to see you, for several reasons. One of which, I don't imagine you're going to like very much."
"Sir?" Janaki said a bit warily, and Vargan gave him a lopsided smile, dark eyes sympathetic.
"I'm afraid there have been some changes in your orders. I know you were supposed to be their military escort all the way back to Sharona, but given what's been going on in Tajvana, the Powers That Be have decided they need you home as quickly as possible, and not as just one more platoon-captain. Which means, I'm sorry to say, that delivering these prisoners to Salby is the last thing you're going to do as an Imperial Marine … Your Highness."
Janaki had guessed where Vargan was headed, and he'd been prepared to protest. But he didn't. He didn't because even as Vargan spoke, a lightning bolt seemed to stab through his brain. It hit so hard, so suddenly, his breath actually caught.
The Glimpse made no sense. Not yet. Regiment-Captain Velvelig had told him about the warning his father had sent down-chain after the Emperor and Andrin had experienced their initial Glimpses.
Unfortunately, the warning hadn't come with a great deal of detail-not unusual, as Janaki knew only too well, where Glimpses were concerned. Yet the little bit Velvelig had been able to tell him resonated strongly with the images of fire and explosions, the sound of screams and the thunder of weapons, ripping through him now.
Janaki's Talent had never been remotely as strong as his sister's. In fact, he'd always been rather guiltily thankful that it wasn't. He'd watched his father and Andrin dealing with the … discomfort of their Glimpses, and he'd been glad his own Glimpses had never hit him that hard.
Today, though, he longed for a bit more of Andrin's sensitivity. Chan Braikal had told him about the Glimpse he'd experienced on their march to Hell's Gate, but Janaki himself remembered nothing from it.
That was more than merely frustrating, although he'd been able to guess-given the fact that the Chalgyn Consortium crew had been massacred only a very few hours after he'd experienced it-what it must have been about. But from the physical reactions chan Braikal had described, it was obvious that it must have been a very powerful Glimpse, much more powerful than he'd ever had before. And because no one had ever expected him to have a Glimpse of that strength, his training in how to dig it back out of his subconscious was nowhere near as good as his sister's.
"Are you all right, Your Highness?"
He heard Vargan's voice echoing weirdly through the power of his Glimpse and tried to force his eyes to focus on the company-captain. For a second or two-possibly even a little longer-they flatly refused.
They were … somewhere else. Somewhere dark and frightening.
Then they did focus, and Janaki sucked in a deep, sudden breath.
"Your Highness?" Vargan repeated, and this time there was genuine concern in his voice.
"I'm sorry, Company-Captain," Janaki said, shaking himself vigorously. "I … guess I really didn't want to hear that."
"I wish I hadn't had to tell you," Vargan admitted.
"Well, I hope all of this enthusiasm to get me home doesn't mean I have to leap right on the next train."
Janaki prayed that his smile didn't look as forced as it felt. "I've been doing nothing but traveling for the best part of four months now-first to Hell's Gate, and then straight back home from Hell's Gate. I'd really, really like to spend one day or so sitting still. Preferably in a deep, hot bathtub somewhere."
"They said they want your return expedited," Vargan said slowly. "Still, it's going to take us most of a day just to figure out the train schedule, given the way the Third Dragoons' movement is screwing up the TTE's timetables. I can't guarantee anything, but I suspect Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik could see his way to letting you have twenty-four hours. Maybe even forty-eight."
"I'd like that, Sir."
"We'll see what we can do, Your Highness. I promise."
"Thank you, Sir."
"And now," Vargan continued, "let's get these POWs of yours off the train. I've arranged suitable-and secure-quarters for them while they're our … guests."
Janaki nodded and followed Vargan as the company-captain strode briskly over to the train, but the crown prince's thoughts were somewhere else entirely. He hoped Vargan was right about chan
Skrithik.
If the company-captain wasn't, then it was going to be up to Janaki to find some way to change the regiment-captain's mind. Janaki needed that time here at Fort Salby, and not just for a bath, however sensually seductive hot water and soap might be.
Whatever he'd just Glimpsed, it was going to happen here-right here, at Salby, and physical proximity to a Glimpse's locus had a powerful sharpening, focusing effect on the Glimpse itself, even for someone whose Talent was as erratic as Janaki's. So he needed to be here, if he was going to figure out what that Glimpse truly meant. But the one thing he knew with absolute certainty was that if he explained what he'd already Seen to chan Skrithik, he'd never be given the opportunity. The Fort Salby CO would literally throw him onto the next train-and, in the absence of trains, onto horseback-to get him as far away as possible if Janaki told him the one crystal-clear image he'd brought back from his Glimpse in the instant his eyes refocused.
The image of Company-Captain Orkam Vargan's decapitated body sprawled across torn, corpse-strewn ground while his blood soaked into Fort Salby's parade ground.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Commander of Fifty Halesak reminded himself that he was going to need the use of his hands soon.
Which would be a bit of the problem if he insisted on clinging to the rope so tightly that the hands in question were numb.
He forced himself to loosen his grip-a little-and pressed his face against the side of the transport dragon's freight platform. Even with the Air Force-style face shield on his helmet, the wind of the mighty beast's passage threatened to suck the breath right out of his lungs. He felt every prodigious sweep of the dragon's pinions, the pounding of its vast heart, and the night wind battering past him was cold even through his heavy clothing and thick gloves, also Air Force-supplied, at an altitude of almost six thousand feet.
All of that was true-and none of it mattered at all. Not tonight. Tonight was even more important than silencing the relays in the Voice chain. Tonight they brought some of their people home again, and no one-no one-was going to do that without the Second Andarans.
The dragon slowed abruptly, and Halesak's nerves tightened as the cargo-master slapped him on the shoulder in warning. The commander of fifty pulled his head back as the slipstream weakened. He looked down, and saw their objective.
Timing for this operation had been tricky. Halesak wasn't sure exactly where the other side of this portal was located, but it had to be at least seven or eight thousand miles further east in its own universe, given the obvious ten-hour or so time difference between the two aspects of the portal. Personally, he suspected that was one reason the Sharonians had located their portal fort in the lee of a steep ridgeline.
The last thing someone needed in the middle of his night was to have a miles-wide half-disk of noonday brightness streaming in through the window. To be sure, it was undoubtedly a spectacular sight when that flaming sun and hot, bright sky carved themselves out of a sky dusted with winter constellations.
Halesak had watched the same sort of thing himself, with an unfailing sense of awe … and knew how fervently he and his fellow troopers would have bitched if it had been shining in through their windows.
From all the reports, the far side of the portal also had to be substantially lower in altitude. There'd been ample signs of the kind of damage that sort of differential produced, although it had obviously happened a long, long time ago. That damage had complicated things a bit when it came to picking the path for the ground element, too. In the end, they'd had to take a chance on sending in a high-altitude recon gryphon and generating detailed topographic maps from the imagery its crystal had captured.
Fortunately, no one on the ground seemed to have noticed the unusually large eagle circling over their fort.
Ideally, the planners would have liked to hit Ghartoun in full darkness. Thanks to the portal, however, there was no full darkness for this particular objective. The best they'd been able to do was to schedule the attack for roughly five o'clock in the morning, local time. At this time of year, that would still be about thirty minutes before local sunrise, and about thirty minutes after sunset on the other side of the portal. It wouldn't be true full dark on either side, but at least the portal was east of their objective. That meant all of the available light would be coming from the same direction, which would let them approach out of the darker western sky above the Cratak Mountains. Personally, Halesak would have preferred some heavy cloud cover, but that wasn't going to happen here.
The cargo-master slapped his shoulder again, harder this time, and Halesak nodded vigorously. Then the dragon swept over the parapet of the fort, clearing it by barely fifty feet, and braked into an abrupt hover as the Gifted cargo-master activated the levitation spell.
The spell wouldn't support the dragon's heavy bulk for more than a very few minutes, but that was all the time in this universe-or any other-Iftar Halesak and his men needed.
Under-Armsman Lyntail chan Turkan hated the dawn watch.
Chan Turkan was what was technically known in the PAAF as "a screwup." Actually, Master-Armsman Karuk, Fort Ghartoun's senior noncom, was prone to use a rather more pithy and less polite term in his own native Arpathian on the many occasions when he … counseled chan Turkan. Which was one reason chan Turkan tended to draw the dawn watch as often as he did, given that Karuk was a great believer in using unpleasant duty as a gentle spur to encourage better performance. And when Regiment- Captain Velvelig decided to double the sentries on each watch for reasons best known only to himself, chan Turkan had been the inevitable candidate for his present duty.
After almost eight months of attempting to encourage better performance, however, even someone as formidable as Master-Armsman Karuk might be excused for beginning to feel the first, faint outriders of despair where chan Turkan was concerned.
The master-armsman might not have despaired, but he was showing clear signs of deciding the time had come for more drastic measures. Chan Turkan had no idea what those "more drastic measures" might be, but as he stood on Fort Ghartoun's eastern parapet, gazing out at the portal and the dawn slowly strengthening beyond it, he was glumly certain he'd be finding out shortly.
As it happened, he was wrong.
Something made him turn around. It might have been a sound, it might have been something else. Either way, he didn't have time to figure out what it was.
His jaw dropped in total disbelief as something the size of a very large wolf or a small pony came hurtling over the fort's western parapet. Whatever it was, chan Turkan had never seen anything like it before. It was an impossible fusion of improbable creatures-something with the head of a huge bird of prey, the hindquarters of a lion, feathered forelegs that ended in monstrous talons, and wings.
It came over the wall, bursting out of the predawn darkness of the western sky without a sound, and the PAAF trooper on the northwestern tower never had a chance to scream. The terrifying apparition swooped down upon him. The clawed talons snatched him up by the shoulders; the clawed rear feet ripped out, raking him from chest to abdomen in a dreadful disemboweling stroke; and the terrible, metallically glinting beak snapped once. The severed head flew in one direction and the discarded, mutilated body tumbled to the parade ground in a shower of blood and other body fluids as the impossible killer rocketed back upwards.
Chan Turkan was frozen, unable to believe-to comprehend-what was happening as more and more of the murderous creatures came streaking over the fort's walls.
Some of the sentries had time to scream as the fresh wave of death swept over them. Someone actually even had time and the presence of mind to start ringing the alarm bell, but it tolled only twice before one of the monstrosities pounced on whoever it was. Chan Turkan heard the screams, heard the high, wailing hunting shrieks of the no-longer-silent killers. Somewhere a rifle or pistol cracked as one of the sentries somehow got a shot off, and chan Turkan found his own hands suddenly scrabbling frantically at the leather rifle sling on his ow
n shoulder.
He was still scrabbling at it when one of the second-wave gryphons struck him from behind, like a falcon striking a hare, and snapped his neck instantly.
As the transport dragon came over the palisade and went into its hover, Halesak watched the opening gryphon strike swarm over the defenders.
He'd always hated the strike gryphons. The recon gryphons were something quite different. First, they were almost always female, whereas every strike gryphon was a male, although that was less important than their other differences. The recon gryphons were also bigger, stronger, less maneuverable, smarter … and much, much more biddable. Some of them were actually affectionate, and became quite devoted to their handlers.
So far as Halesak was aware, no strike gryphon had ever been devoted to anyone. Their designers had built them around an almost insane territoriality, a vicious temper, and a voracious hunger. They had one and only one function: to kill anything in their programmed area of attack. Strike gryphons were never trained for their missions, the way recon gryphons often were. Instead, their handlers relied completely on the compulsion spells laid into the creatures' hate-filled brains through the sarkolis chips surgically implanted in the young no more than four or five days after hatching. That was one reason Halesak hated them. There was always the possibility that those compulsion spells might fail, and the last thing any semi-sane soldier wanted was to have a theoretically "friendly" rogue gryphon rampaging through his formation in a killing frenzy.
