The Road to Hell

Chapter Thirty-Nine

March 17

“Sir, I’m thinking you’d best hear this.”

Grithair chan Mahsdyr looked up at Senior-Armsman chan Golar from the sustaining (but not very appetizing) ration can of lima beans and yellow corn. Under normal circumstances, he would have been pleased by any excuse to divert his attention from its overcooked contents, but chan Golar’s expression wasn’t that of a man who’d come to exchange idle pleasantries.

“Hear what, Tersak?” the company-captain said, mess kit fork still in hand. He swallowed and pointed the fork at the young junior-armsman at the senior-armsman’s heels. “Should I assume I won’t like whatever chan Ynclair has to tell me?”

“Probably not, Sir,” chan Golar replied.

“In that case, Ignathar, you might as well get started.” He stuck the fork into the can and set it aside. “Whatever it is, at least it’ll distract me from lunch!”

Chan Ynclair smiled at the company-captain’s tone, but his eyes were serious.

“Tairkyn got close enough to the portal for a good Plot, Sir,” he said, and chan Mahsdyr’s lips tightened.

“And when he did, he found something, right?”

“Right, I’m afraid, Sir.”

“And did you get close enough to See what he’d Plotted?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Well, don’t make me pull it out of you one ‘Yes, Sir,’ at a time?” chan Mahsdyr said a bit tartly.

“Sorry, Sir. We didn’t See anything on this side of the portal, so we crossed the threshold to take a look at Fort Rensar. Once we were over the threshold, Tairkyn got a good Plot and told me he’d picked up forty or fifty men, a couple of dozen of those unicorn things of theirs, and something he’d never Plotted before, so I took a look. I make it forty-five men, ten of their unicorns, and a coop full of what I guess are those ‘hummers’ you’ve had us looking for. Well, ‘a coop full’ is probably a bit of an overstatement. There’re only six of them.”

“Wonderful.” Chan Mahsdyr sat back on the rock he was using as a chair and gazed sourly for several long, thoughtful moments into the small fire over which he’d heated his unappetizing meal. Chan Golar and chan Ynclair stood waiting patiently until he looked back up at them once more.

“Are they parked in Fort Rensar?” he asked.

“Not exactly, Sir. Looks like the fort burned to the ground when the Arcanans came through. These boys’re camped out on the hill behind it.”

“Camped out this time of year?” Chan Mahsdyr smiled nastily. “They’re actually under canvas?”

“Yes, Sir, they are. And they don’t seem too happy about it, either.”

“Can’t blame them for that, Sir,” chan Golar put in. Chan Mahsdyr glanced at him, and the senior-armsman’s expression was sour. “Not ’s bad as it was crossing Naisom, Sir, but I still wouldn’t half like spending the winter under canvas in these parts. Unless these bastards have some kind of magic windproof tent!”

“That they don’t, Senior-Armsman,” chan Ynclair said. “They do have some of those glowing rocks they use instead of fires, but these are some very unhappy troopers, and I don’t think blue’s their natural color.”

“Well, that’s nice to know, anyway,” chan Mahsdyr said thoughtfully. He scratched his chin, then looked up at chan Golar.

“Go find Platoon-Captain chan Sabyr, Tersak. I think this might be right up First Platoon’s alley. And tell him I think we’ll need chan Gyulair.”

“Yes, Sir!” Chan Golar’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction as he touched his chest in salute and turned on his heel. As the senior-armsman headed off through the damp chill, chan Mahsdyr turned his attention back to chan Ynclair.

“And while the Senior-Armsman’s doing that, Ignathar, you can start drawing me a sketch map.”

* * *

“What a sorry-arsed collection of fuck ups,” Armsman 1/c Fozak chan Gyulair observed. “Bastards’re acting like they didn’t have an enemy in the world!”

“Sort of the point to our having snuck up on them, Fozzy,” Armsman Wendyr chan Jethos replied. He lay on his belly beside chan Gyulair on a hilltop just over a mile east of the Tyrahl River, peering down through powerful field glasses at the burned out shell of what had been a Portal Authority fort. The fort had been built on moderately high ground between their present position and the eastern bank of the river, far enough above the normal water level to keep its garrison’s feet dry during the spring floods. The enormous arc of the portal connecting this universe to universe of Thermyn towered above them, effortlessly dominating the entire horizon. It was three hours earlier on the Thermyn side of the portal, and that vast arc was still purple with the light of early dawn. Its extreme northern end crossed the riverbed at an angle to their left, just south of the roughly two mile-long island below the ruined fort. It was unusual for a portal to actually intersect the course of a major river. For all the blue lines crawling across any topographical map, major streams were relatively few in number compared to the amount of space in which a portal might appear. When they did intersect, however, interesting things could happen. In this instance, the mile-wide Tyrahl simply poured itself into the portal and disappeared, leaving its bed downstream from the portal dry and empty. It also created a trans-universal river on the Thermyn side, where it met-and just about doubled the flow of-the Sand Rock River about eight miles south-southwest of Chindar.

The bed didn’t stay empty forever on the Nairsom side, of course. The Tyrahl was the longest river in all of New Ternath, longer even than the mighty Vandor which flowed all the way from the Inland Seas to the Gulf of Cordara. A riverbed that long, draining that much watershed, could always find enough water to resurrect itself over the six or seven hundred miles from their current location to the Vandor. Still, it was impressive to watch that much water go pouring from one universe to another. And the fact that the riverbed was dry vastly simplified the problem of how to get the company-and the rest of 3rd Dragoons-across it when the time came.

Their attention wasn’t on the river just now, though.

“Looks like Ignathar’s sketch was just about perfect,” chan Jethos went on, rising on his elbows as he swept his field glasses across the encampment. Unlike his partner, he was no Distance Viewer. He was a very powerful Plotter, however. “I See the coops for their ‘hummers’ about fifty yards due east of their bivouac. Got ’em?”

“Got ’em,” chan Gyulair confirmed in a grimmer, harder tone and smuggled down behind his big, bipod-mounted Mark 12 rifle. The weapon had a barrel just over thirty-four inches long and a double-set trigger. In trained hands it was capable of delivering a killing shot at over a thousand yards…and in some people’s hands, it could do the same thing at two thousand yards.

Fozak chan Gyulair had the hands-and the Talent-to take full advantage of his weapon’s capabilities.

“Don’t See anyone moving around near them at the moment,” chan Jethos continued, his voice taking on a faintly singsong note as he closed his physical eyes to focus more fully on his own Talent. He was chan Gyulair’s regular spotter, with a Talent which was relatively short ranged but capable of very fine degrees of discrimination over the range it had.

“Just let me know if that changes,” chan Gyulair said flatly.

* * *

“Who’s got lookout duty this afternoon?” Nyk Phiery asked.

He was the squad shield for 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, C Company, 2nd Battalion, 451st Regiment, of the Union of Arcana Army, and he didn’t sound happy.

“That would be Dhugahl, I believe,” Sword Kilvyn Forstmir replied. “Why?”

“Because it’s an hour past chow time and no one’s relieved Jelmart and Vermahka. They’re getting a little hungry, Sword.”

Forstmir frowned, and not at the bite in Phiery’s voice. The 1st Squad leader did his best to keep his own people on their toes and sharp, just as Forstmir tried to do for the entire understrength platoon, but both of them were fighting-and losing-an uphill battle. It wasn’t surprising the platoon should feel thoroughly crapped on, stuck out here at the arse-end of nowhere and under canvas in the middle of a northern Yanko winter. It was the most miserable, godsforsaken assignment Forstmir had ever caught, and gods knew he’d caught more than a few in the course of his fifteen-year career. And it didn’t help that every member of the platoon knew Commander of One Hundred Thimanus Gorzalt, C Company’s CO, had chosen them for this blissful duty because he’d taken a profound dislike to Commander of Fifty Zakar Ustmyn.

Forstmir wasn’t supposed to know that, but it would be a cold day in Shartahk’s hell when a platoon sword didn’t know everything that might affect his platoon. Forstmir knew all about the feud between Gorzalt and Ustmyn. He also knew Thousand Carthos had left Gorzalt-who might most kindly be described as a bit of a dud as an officer-to keep an eye on the “backdoor” portal between Nairsom and New Uromath because he’d figured not even Gorzalt could do much harm stuck way out here. It wasn’t as if the dragon-less Sharonians were coming pouring through Nairsom anytime soon, after all, especially when they had their hands full with Two Thousand Harshu and the rest of the AEF in Traisum. Unfortunately, Gorzalt seemed to be aware of Carthos’ reasoning, and he resented the hells out of it. And, also unfortunately, Commander of Fifty Ustmyn was not the most socially adroit youngster to ever don the Union of Arcana’s uniform. In fact, he was pretty maladroit, when you came down to it, and he’d managed to put his foot squarely on Gorzalt’s injured pride in an overheard conversation with one of the company’s other fifties.

Now, personally, Forstmir couldn’t fault Ustmyn’s opinion of their CO, but he wished to Seiknora that the fifty had been able to keep his mouth shut when Gorzalt was in hearing range. And, truth be told, the sword was more than a little pissed off with his own fifty at the moment, too. Zakar Ustmyn was only twenty-three, but he was generally serious about doing his job and did it one hell of a lot better than Gorzalt did his. At the moment, though, he was spending most of his time resenting Gorzalt’s decision to stick him out in the wreckage of the old Sharonian fort-under canvas-while the rest of the company not only enjoyed a much nicer (and far better sheltered) campsite on the local equivalent of the Jerdyn River, six miles away, but also monopolized the limited number of chansyu huts Thousand Carthos had left behind. In fact, Ustmyn was spending far more time resenting the unfairness of it all than thinking about his own responsibilities.

Forstmir didn’t mind kicking the platoon’s arse when it needed kicking. After all, everyone knew the senior noncoms actually ran the Army while the officers simply commanded it! But he did like to think that his own fifty had at least some notion of which arses needed kicking and why. At the moment, it appeared Ustmyn neither had nor wanted a clue about that. And there was always someone like Shield Mahk Dhugahl, 2nd Squad’s leader, who’d see just how far he could exploit a superior’s lack of interest.

“I’ll go kick Dhugahl’s arse up between his ears,” he told Phiery now. “Tell Jelmart and Vermahka that their reliefs’ll be on the way shortly. Very shortly.”

* * *

“Not a sound.” Junior-Armsman Saith chan Kilvaryk’s voice was barely audible, but none of 2nd Squad’s men had any trouble understanding him. “The Senior said he’d have your guts for boot laces if anybody gives this away, but I wouldn’t worry about him. First you’d have to live through what I’ll do to you.”

The squad nodded as one. They didn’t really think chan Kilvaryk would murder them out of hand…but they weren’t prepared to place any bets on that.

“All right,” the junior-armsman said after sweeping his dark eyes back and forth across them for several seconds. “Chan Nysik, a lot of this is on you. You need to get into position fast.”

“Gotcha, Junior.”

Chan Nysik was a couple of years older than chan Kilvaryk, and while he’d never had any ambition to rise above his present rank of Armsman 1/c, he was as solid and reliable as the rocky crags of his native Mulgethia’s mountains. He was also very tall and powerfully built. The Faraika machine-gun weighed over a hundred and twenty pounds, but he carried it with little apparent effort while his assistant made heavy going of its tripod, which weighed barely fifty. Now he gave chan Kilvaryk a lazy, confident smile.

“Don’t you worry, Junior,” he said. “Once Larthy and me are in position with old Maragleth”-he hefted the machine gun in his arms with a smile which showed a missing tooth-“ain’t none of them Arcanans getting past us.”

“Glad to hear it,” chan Kilvaryk said dryly. He gave his entire squad one more beady-eyed look, then jerked his head in a “follow me” gesture, turned on his heel, and started forward.

* * *

“I hope this works as well as I’ve convinced everyone else it will, Doc,” Grithair chan Mahsdyr muttered to the man beside him as his company moved forward.

Platoon-Captain Fezar chan Birhahl, Gold Company’s senior healer, snorted in amusement.

“Well, you certainly didn’t sound to me as if you had any doubts about it, Sir,” he said.

“Of course I didn’t!” Chan Mahsdyr shook his head. “First thing they teach you is to always sound like you know what you’re doing even if you don’t have a clue. In this case, I’m pretty sure I do have a clue. I’m just not sure what else I have.”

“Surprise, for one thing,” chan Birhahl replied much more seriously, and chan Mahsdyr grunted.

“Looks like it, anyway,” he acknowledged. “And that’s the most dangerous weapon there is, really, when you come down to it.”

Chan Birhahl was a healer, but he’d been around soldiers who weren’t healers long enough to understand exactly what the company-captain meant, and he nodded in agreement.

All the Distance Viewers attached to Gold Company agreed that both the Arcanans in the ruins of Fort Rensar and those in the far more substantial-and comfortable-permanent bivouac in the valley of the Graystone River showed absolutely no awareness that there were any Sharonians in their vicinity. It was remotely possible they knew all about Gold Company and were setting some sort of subtle trap based on yet another unknown magical ability, but it seemed unlikely. This was one of the times when chan Mahsdyr passionately wished that he had at least a touch of the Distance Viewer Talent himself and could have avoided the need to rely on the reports of the observations of others.

Isn’t any different from relying on any other report from a forward scout, Grithair, he told himself firmly. Just keep remembering that.

And, if the Distance Viewers were correct about that element of surprise, it meant Gold Company and the rest of 2nd Battalion had gotten all the way to the very doorstep of Thermyn without any Arcanan seeing a thing.

Of course, that just puts even more pressure on us to make sure the bastards behind them stay equally fat, dumb, and ignorant. It’s still thirteen hundred miles to Fort Ghartoun, even after we’re through the portal. Plenty of time for them to arrange something nasty if we fuck up at this point!

At least the terrain favored them. The only really tricky bit was getting past the miserable, cold squad or two of Arcanans who’d staked out the ruins of the fort. The dry riverbed below the portal provided quite a lot of cover for men as well trained at wringing every possible advantage out of any terrain feature as those of the 3rd Dragoons. Its depth gave excellent cover against anyone at the level of the riverbank, at least until they were most of the way across. Better yet, the angled portal itself created a huge blind spot. If he’d been in charge of picketing it, he’d have had positions for two or three section-sized outposts stretched across each aspect, but especially on the southern side, where the river had disappeared into Thermyn. That would have given him an excellent chance of spotting anyone trying to sneak across the river towards him.

But the Arcanans hadn’t done that. Fort Rensar had been designed as an administrative node, not a serious defensive work, and while it had an excellent view of the portion of the Tyrahl River which still had water in it, its view of the empty bed beyond the portal was badly restricted by the portal itself. By moving a mile or so downstream, chan Mahsdyr’s men had been able to cross the channel without anyone at the fort seeing a thing. Worse-or, actually, better from his perspective-it was obvious the idiot who’d picked the location for their main encampment hadn’t thought about the fact his forward pickets had such an enormous blind spot. If there’d been one approach route chan Mahsdyr would have worried about, it was the empty riverbed, not the one that was still full of icy cold, rushing water, yet the southwesternmost edge of the portal completely concealed it from anyone in the Graystone’s valley just as completely as from Fort Rensar. They literally couldn’t see anything coming around the portal’s eastern aspect. Why in Chindarsu’s name they hadn’t pulled their encampment all the way back to the Thermyn side of the portal if they weren’t going to picket this side adequately was more than chan Mahsdyr was prepared to guess.

He wasn’t about to complain, however. His maps were both detailed and highly accurate, updated by the TTE’s surveyors to account for any discrepancies between the purely local geography of Nairsom and that of Sharona. With that advantage, it hadn’t been difficult to pick his approach route to the spot he wanted. He imagined his men-especially those of the mortar platoon-were inventing imaginative curses for him at the moment as they struggled across the rugged terrain, but he was fine with that. And they’d be fine with it, too, if they managed to get into position without being spotted.

“Well, Doc, I guess it’s time we were heading out, too.”

* * *

Commander of Fifty Gilthar Vurth closed the door of 2nd Platoon’s mess hall chansyu hut and stood on the front step, idly picking his teeth with a toothpick. It was getting on towards evening-days were short this early in the year and this far north-and the cooks were about ready to start serving dinner. As Thimanus Gorzalt’s senior platoon commander and acting executive officer, it was one of Vurth’s self-appointed duties to sample each meal and make certain it was worthy of the Union of Arcana’s fighting men.

It wasn’t like he had anything else to do out here in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

He grimaced at the thought and wondered once again what god or demon he’d offended to end up under Gorzalt’s command. Of course, the 451st Regiment was a far cry from one of the Army’s elite units, like the 2nd Andaran Scouts. No doubt there was some sort of seismic settling process which inexorably moved less than scintillating officers into its ranks and away from those more elite units. The only problem with that theory was that while it explained how Gorzalt had ended up in the 451st, it didn’t explain what Vurth was doing here.

Or I hope to hells it doesn’t, anyway, he reflected.

He shrugged and turned toward the barren, unkempt “parade ground” Gorzalt had insisted on laying out between the mess hall and his HQ hut. It hadn’t gotten a lot of use since Thousand Carthos pulled back to rejoin the main expeditionary force in Traisum. Vurth tried to make sure all the men were inspected at least weekly and got at least some time on the firing range every week. It shouldn’t have been difficult, but Gorzalt seemed to have withdrawn into a sulk when he realized who was being left behind to picket the portal, and the rest of C Company appeared to have caught the malaise from its CO. Well, aside from Zakar Ustmyn, at least, and look what Ustmyn’s attitude had gotten him!

Vurth shook his head in disgust-disgust directed almost as much at himself as at Gorzalt-and started across the “parade ground” as the shadows cast by the high ground to the northwest began to creep over it.

* * *

“Platoon-Captain chan Urhal’s in position, Sir.”

Grithair chan Mahsdyr took the hastily scribbled note from Armsman 1/c chan Tylwyr, his company Flicker, and managed-somehow-not to say “At last!” It would have been unprofessional, unfair to Jersalma chan Urhal’s 3rd Platoon, and a case of blaming the wrong person, anyway. He’d been right about the way the terrain would cover his approach, but he’d made insufficient allowance for how it would slow that approach. For the last hour or so, he’d been afraid he was going to lose the light before all of his men were in place. That would have left him with the choice of mounting a night attack or waiting in position-without cover and without bedrolls-until dawn. Neither was a palatable alternative, although he was pretty sure he’d have gone with the first if it came to it. Surprise and darkness should let them sweep up the entire Arcanan encampment, but that same darkness would make it much easier for someone to get away with word of Gold Company’s presence.

Now, fortunately, he wouldn’t have to. He still had at least forty-five minutes, more likely an hour and a half. That should be plenty of time.

“All right, Shodan,” he told chan Tylwyr. “It’s time. Pass the word.”

“Yes, Sir!”

The Flicker gave him a quick, broad smile, and then concentrated on the neat row of metal message tubes laid out in front of him. They vanished in rapid, silent succession, as quickly as a Faraika spat out bullets, and chan Mahsdyr raised his field glasses and looked down from the ridgeline.

He stood barely eight hundred yards from the center of the Arcanan outpost, looking down from the top of a five hundred-foot hill. The Graystone’s valley widened at this point, so its further side was almost fourteen hundred yards from his present position. That was farther than he really liked, but the contour lines were also much steeper and he’d gotten chan Urhal’s platoon down onto the valley floor itself. That was one reason this had taken so long; 3rd Platoon had been forced to swing substantially wider than the rest of his attack force. That was the bad news. The good news was that chan Urhal had managed to use the Graystone’s bed to infiltrate to within little more than three hundred yards of the encampment without being spotted.

Now, as chan Tylwyr’s Flicked message tubes reached their destinations, half a dozen mortars opened fire.

* * *

Gilthar Vurth was halfway across Thimanus Gorzalt’s parade ground when the first mortar bomb landed.

The two support platoons assigned to Gold Company were equipped with light, three-inch mortars, not the much heavier four-and-a-half-inch weapons of a heavy mortar company, and chan Mahsdyr had brought only one platoon across the riverbed. The three-inch projectiles weighed less than a third as much as those of their bigger brethren and, at four thousand yards, they had only two thirds the range. But they had ample reach for the task in hand, and their seven-pound bombs came sliding down the frigid air with the sound of whispering silk.

Vurth just had time to register the mortars’ muted coughs. It wasn’t much to hear, really, because they were emplaced in the dead ground behind the hill upon which chan Mahsdyr had taken up his position. The fifty’s head came up, turning as he tried to determine the peculiar sounds’ direction. Unfortunately for him, he’d never heard mortar fire before. He had no idea what he’d heard, and the incoming fire arrived long before he could figure it out.

He’d never heard mortars firing before, and he’d never hear them again, either. One of the plunging bombs landed barely fifteen feet from him and the blast hurled his broken, bleeding body back into the front wall of the mess hall. He oozed down it in a broad, crimson streak of blood, his eyes already settling into the dull, fixed stare of death.

* * *

Commander of One Hundred Thimanus Gorzalt jerked upright in his chair as the explosions thundered. He sprang to his feet, eyes wide, expression incredulous, and wheeled toward the single window in the chansyu hut’s southern wall.

He got there just as another mortar bomb impacted on the hut’s roof almost directly above him.

* * *

Sword Trymayn Ilkathym heard a voice bellowing orders, fighting to bring some sort of order out of the sudden, terrifying chaos. It took him a moment to realize the voice belonged to him…and that he didn’t hear a single one of C Company’s officers. He knew he wouldn’t hear Gilthar Vurth’s. He’d been waiting for the fifty on the far side of the parade ground when the first Sharonian fire exploded like Shartahk’s own thunderbolts. He’d seen his fifty blown backwards, seen him smash into the mess hall’s wall and ooze down it, and he’d seen more than enough dead men to recognize one more.

Then he heard something no Arcanan had ever heard before. He heard the high, fiercely snarling wolf’s howl of ancient Ternathia and the wild music of the war pipes of the mountains of Delkrathia. The Imperial Ternathian Army had adopted those pipes more than two millennia ago, and their savage voice had played Ternathia’s soldiers to victory on more battlefields than even the best military historian could have counted.

And then the Faraika machine guns which had been wrestled forward opened fire from the ridgeline on which Grithair chan Mahsdyr stood watching.

“Move, gods damn you! Move!” Ilkathym’s sword was in his hand, somehow, and he jabbed it at the steep valley side from which that spreading thundered came. “Get your weapons and fucking follow me!”

Perhaps a half-dozen voices answered, and he snarled. He already knew how this was going to end, but he’d been a soldier for seventeen years. That was more than half his entire life, and here at the end, he discovered that he didn’t know how to be anything else.

“Follow me, boys!” he screamed and charged across the valley.

He got fifty yards before a.40 caliber bullet hit him squarely at the base of his throat.

* * *

“Mother Jambakol!”

Kilvyn Forstmir whirled towards the sudden sound of explosions and gunfire, his face gaunt with shock in the afternoon light pouring through from the far side of the portal. The main encampment was over four miles from Fort Rensar’s charred remains, but sound carried extraordinarily well in the cold, still air. He’d never heard anything like it, and he didn’t really know what he was hearing now, but he knew who had to be behind it.

How? How in the names of all the gods could Sharonians have gotten this far down-chain from Traisum so quickly? And how could they have done it without anyone spotting them?

The questions hammered through him, and his jaw tightened as he realized the answer to the last one, at least. They’d gotten into position to attack Hundred Gorzalt’s position because C Company had let them. He’d known-known-Gorzalt hadn’t even tried to properly picket the portal. And instead of trying to do anything about it himself, instead of finding some way to prod his own fifty into doing something about it, he’d sat on his own mental arse and wasted his energy bitching at his officers. It was damned well an officer’s job not to let something like this happen, but when they didn’t step up and do it, someone else had to.

And he hadn’t.

“What the hells is all that racket, Sword?!”

He turned to see Fifty Ustmyn bursting out of his tent, buckling his sword belt as he came.

“Only one thing it can be, Sir,” he said grimly.

“But how in Shartahk’s name could Sharonians have gotten all the way down-chain to Nairsom?!”

“Don’t know, Sir.” Forstmir’s tone was flat. “Hells, maybe they do have their own version of dragons! Doesn’t really matter right now though, does it?”

“You’re right about that,” Ustmyn said after half a breath and squared his shoulders. “If they’re here, they’re twenty-five hundred miles closer to Hell’s Gate than Two Thousand Harshu. And if they got here this quickly-”

He and his platoon sword looked at one another sickly. To get to this point, the Sharonians had traveled almost eighteen thousand miles-six thousand of them across the Treybus Ocean in the middle of winter-in no more than four months…and that assumed they’d started instantly. And if they could reach Nairsom that quickly, they could almost certainly beat Two Thousand Harshu to Hell’s Gate and cut his communications behind him.

“Must’ve missed us somehow, Sir,” Forstmir said quietly. “Either that, or they figure they can tidy us up anytime after they deal with the rest of the Company. But they’ll be coming.”

“I know.” Ustmyn rubbed his chin, then inhaled sharply. “Get the men turned to, Kilvyn. It probably won’t matter, but we can at least try. And in the meantime, these bastards must not’ve realized we have a hummer cot of our own.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Tell Galvara I need him.”

“Yes, Sir!”

Forstmir slapped his breastplate in salute and headed off into the gathering twilight, shouting orders to the shaken men of 2nd Platoon. Ustmyn looked after him for a moment, then sat on one of the fort’s burned timbers, pulled a recording crystal out of his belt pouch, and began dictating his report.

* * *

“You wanted me, Sir?”

Ustmyn looked up as Lance Gordymair Galvara, the leader of the three-man hummer section Hundred Gorzalt had attached to 2nd Platoon, slid to a halt beside him. Gorzalt hadn’t sent his most capable hummer master out to share 2nd Platoon’s misery, but at least Galvara didn’t seem to be panicking.

Probably lack of imagination, the fifty thought mordantly.

“Yes, Galvara,” he said out loud and extended the crystal. “Get this transferred and into the air as soon as possible. It’s critical this message get through, so copy it to every hummer you’ve got.”

“But if we send them all off, Sir, we won’t have any left for additional messages,” Galvara pointed out.

“No, we won’t,” Ustmyn said almost gently. “On the other hand, I don’t really think we’re going to need them. Do you?”

Galvara stared at him. Then his eyes widened and he swallowed.

“No, Sir. Don’t reckon we will,” he said, reaching for the crystal.

“Which makes it especially important to get this one right.” Ustmyn gripped the lance’s shoulder. “Make sure you do, Gordymair.”

“Aye, Sir. I’ll do that thing.”

The lance’s Limathian accent was more pronounced than Ustmyn had ever heard it, but his jaw firmed and he nodded sharply.

“Good man.” The fifty squeezed his shoulder again. “Now, go get it sent,” he said and turned to follow Forstmir as Galvara ran towards the hummers.

* * *

“Oh, laddie, that’s a bad, bad idea,” Wendyr chan Jethos said softly.

“Can’t blame them for trying,” Fozak chan Gyulair replied and drew a deep breath as he settled even more squarely behind his Mark 12. “And it’s why we’re here.”

“I know.” Chan Jethos shook his head. “Doesn’t hardly seem fair, though.”

“And what those bastards did to every Voice between Hell’s Gate and Traisum was fair?”

“Didn’t say that.” Chan Jethos closed his eyes, concentrating on his Talent. “Good news is there’s only one of ’em so far. Might be the others’ll take the hint.”

“Maybe.”

Chan Gyulair had his own eyes closed as he squeezed the rear trigger, transforming the one in front of it into a hair trigger that could be touched off almost with a thought. He ignored the bulky, powerful telescopic sight mounted atop his rifle. In fact, he hadn’t even opened the protective lens caps. There were times he needed that sight, because his was a very special Talent. He was a Predictive Distance Viewer. His range was too short to be useful for the artillery, where ranges of up to fifteen or even twenty miles might be required, but it was more than long enough for other purposes, and the Army aggressively recruited men like him for its snipers. He had to know where to Look, which was why he was normally paired with chan Jethos, whose Plotting Talent located his targets for him. Without that sort of spotter, he had to search for them the old-fashioned way, using his eyes first and his Talent second, which explained the sight.

But today, he did know where to Look, and as he Watched Gordymair Galvara racing towards the hummers, he recognized the exact moment when he’d be in exactly the right spot.

Of course, it wasn’t enough to simply know where the target was. No Talent could provide the breath control, the steadiness, the ability to gauge the range and put a bullet precisely where it needed to be precisely when it needed to be there. That took years of training and constant practice, but Fozak chan Gyulair had invested those years in mastering his trade.

* * *

The 320-grain bullet was still traveling at almost nine hundred feet per second when it struck Lance Galvara directly above his right eye like a five hundred and seventy-pound hammer.