The Road to Hell

Chapter Eleven

December 16

“Am I glad to see you!” Therman Ulthar said fervently.

“Likewise.”

Sarma’s response was a bit more reserved as he watched the released Sharonians intermingled with Arcanans in the bucket brigade working to extinguish the brig’s flames before it spread to the rest of the fort. Somehow none of his plans had anticipated letting Regiment-Captain Velvelig and his companions out of their cell-not, at least, until there’d been time to establish certain ground rules. Under the circumstances, however, trying to put them right back into confinement didn’t strike him as the best idea he’d ever had. Especially not when he considered how competently Velvelig and one of his noncoms, who looked enough like the regiment-captain to have been at least a distant cousin, were holding the infantry arbalests they’d somehow acquired.

He turned away from the fire for a moment, gazing at the bodies sprawled in the dancing light and shadow from the crackling flames. He couldn’t quite decide what he felt. He’d never wanted anyone, Arcanan or Sharonian, to die, yet he couldn’t pretend he and Ulthar hadn’t always known the odds were very much against pulling off a successful mutiny without casualties. And it could have been far worse, especially if Sahnger hadn’t pulled off the stables and moved to neutralize Yankaro’s platoon on his own initiative. At least the mutineers-he didn’t like the word, but it was the only one which truly applied-had suffered only three fatal casualties. Six others had been wounded, the most seriously of them Sarkhol Gersmyn’s savagely burned hand, but none so badly as to surpass the Gift of Commander of Fifty Sorthar Maisyl, the journeyman magistron assigned as Fort Ghartoun’s senior healer. So, taking everything together, he supposed they hadn’t done too badly. Except, of course, that now they had to figure out what to do with Thalmayr…and how to go about reporting all of this in a way that wouldn’t get the lot of them sent straight to the dragon.

“I’m sorry it took us so long to get you out of that hellhole, Regiment-Captain,” he said to Velvelig through his own PC’s translating spellware. “We couldn’t make our move until all the pieces were in place.”

“I can see how that might have been a problem.” Velvelig’s voice was flat, giving away nothing, and his expression gave away even less. “Of course, you two have another little problem now, don’t you?”

“We have several of them, actually,” Ulthar acknowledged with a sour smile. “Which one did you have in mind, Sir?”

“The fact that my people are out of cells and we’re not likely to go back into them peacefully. Which, coupled with the fact that by my best estimate you and your men are still outnumbered somewhere around four or five-to-one by the rest of the garrison, suggests you might just find your resources running short if you tried to make us go back.”

“Frankly, the same thought had already occurred to me,” Sarma admitted, and Ulthar nodded in wry agreement. “Believe me, Regiment-Captain Velvelig, Therman and I are both of the opinion that your people have been abused enough. By the same token, I trust you understand why we can’t simply stand on the fort’s fighting step and wave goodbye as you vanish into the distance. We’re going to be in deep enough dragon shit with our superiors for what we’ve already done, however justified. If we were to, ah…mislay all of you on top of everything else, I’m afraid our word about Thalmayr’s behavior wouldn’t carry very much weight.”

“I could point out that that’s your fucking problem,” Velvelig observed coldly. “We didn’t attack you. And we sure as hells didn’t launch an offensive while we were pretending to negotiate with you! And then there’s that little matter of how many of our Voices you bastards murdered along the way here.”

“We can’t deny any of that,” Ulthar said quietly. “I think you know my men and I had nothing to do with any of it, though, since we were your guests right here at the time. And Jaralt’s been trying to figure out how to stop as much of it as he could from the very beginning. But we’re not very far up the totem pole, Sir. A commander of fifty is only the equivalent of one of your platoon-captains. I know it’s a pretty pale excuse after everything you just listed, but we really were following orders…right up to the moment we completely violated our orders and put the lives of every one of our men into jeopardy in the process.”

Eyes of Andaran blue met dark, hard eyes of Arpathian brown levelly in the firelight. Stillness hovered around the two men, made even stiller by the greedy background crackle of flames, the voices of the men in the bucket brigade, and the hiss when a fresh bucket of water sluiced across blazing timbers. Then, finally, Velvelig nodded slowly.

“Don’t expect me to be doing any drum dances or swearing blood brotherhood anytime soon,” he said. “But I truly do understand what it took for a pair of platoon commanders to run this sort of risk. For that matter,” he added a bit grudgingly, “maybe the fact that the two of you chose to do what you’ve done proves there really is someone in Arcana who understands what honor is.”

Ulthar winced, but he didn’t look away and he couldn’t deny that Velvelig had every right to feel that way.

And he doesn’t even know yet about how that motherless bastard Neshok and the rest of the intelligence pukes lied to us every step of the way. I wonder if he’ll even believe us if we tell him? Not that he wouldn’t find out eventually anyway, even if it’s only at Jaralt and my courts-martial!

“I guess I’m glad you feel that way, Sir,” he said. “And I’m sorry as hell that it took something like this for us to show you that Arcana-or Andara and the Army, at least-really do have a sense of honor. It’s been buried under a pretty damned deep load of dragon shit just at the moment, and cleaning it’s going to be a gods-awful challenge, but it’s got to start somewhere. It might as well be here.”

Velvelig gazed at him a moment longer, then nodded again. He wasn’t going to go out of his way to make that chore any easier for the Arcanan Army in general than he had to, but he had to admit these two youngsters seemed to have made a fair start.

“In the meantime,” Ulthar continued, “I don’t think we have any choice but to keep you and your men in custody-officially, at least. There are only twenty-one of you, so I don’t think you could get very far back towards Sharona with Two Thousand Harshu’s entire army between you and there. And it’s going to be hard enough getting our superior officers to listen to our side of what happened here even with your people available for interviews. If we don’t have you around to back up our testimony, they probably won’t believe us at all, to be honest.”

“We might not be able to get back to Sharona, but we could sure as hells make ourselves scarce enough out there in the wilderness that you people would have one demon of a time finding us again,” Velvelig observed rather caustically. “Besides, what makes you think your superiors would be interested in our testimony?”

“Sir, I’m an officer in the Second Andaran Scouts,” Ulthar said. “That’s the hereditary command of the Olderhan family, and Sir Thankhar Olderhan is the Duke of Garth Showma, who also happens to be the planetary governor of New Arcana and one of the three or four most senior officers in the entire Commandery. When he gets involved in something, things happen, and you don’t want to be part of what he thinks is the problem. I’ve already sent a full report about what’s been happening here to him through a secure channel. He won’t have gotten it yet, but when he does, hell won’t hold what’ll come down on the people responsible. I give you my word of honor on that.”

“This Duke’s going to take a platoon-captain’s word for it despite anything his immediate superiors might have to say?” Velvelig sounded skeptical, and Ulthar didn’t blame him.

“This Duke will definitely take my word,” he replied flatly. “He’d do that anyway, or at least give us a fair hearing, whoever we were. The fact that I’m a Second Andaran will make it easier, I admit. And so will the fact that his son is Shaylar and Jathmar Nargra’s baranal.”

It didn’t register for a moment. Partly because the spellware hadn’t translated the Andaran term, but then Ulthar’s verb tense penetrated and Namir Velvelig’s eyes blazed suddenly.

“What did you say?!” he demanded. “You said ‘is!’ Are you saying Jathmar Nargra and Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr are alive?”

Ulthar stepped back half a pace involuntarily, stunned by Velvelig’s reaction. The Sharonian reached out with one hand as if to grab the front of his tunic and drag him closer, then closed that hand into a fist so tight the knuckles whitened.

“They were the last I heard, Sir,” the Arcanan said cautiously. “Both of them were badly hurt in the original confrontation between our people and yours, and the dragon pulling them back to the rear passed my dragon on the way forward, so I didn’t see either of them personally. But Sword Harnak was at Toppled Timber with Hundred Olderhan, and I’ve had plenty of time to discuss what happened with him. I understand Madam Shaylar had a nasty concussion and Jathmar was so badly burned by an infantry dragon that no one expected him to survive, but Magister Gadrial had enough of the healing Gift to keep him alive until our company healer reached him. Sword Morikan healed him, but Madam Shaylar’s injuries weren’t immediately life threatening and there was only one of him. They had to triage the wounded, and there were too many critically hurt for him to heal her concussion before she and her husband were pulled back to Fort Rycharn, but I’m sure the magistrons there were able to heal both of them fully.”

He glanced at Sarma, who nodded sharply.

“They did,” he told the Sharonian. “I came through Fort Rycharn after they were sent further up-chain, and Five Hundred Klian told me they’d been completely healed. They’d have gotten treatment anyway, but after Hundred Olderhan made them his shardonai they went straight to the head of the queue.

“‘Shardonai’?” Velvelig repeated the Andaran word cautiously. “What in all the Arpathian hells is a shardonai? And why would this Olderhan have made Jathmar and Shaylar into whatever it is?”

“A shardon is…well, a shardon is an adopted member of his baranal’s family,” Ulthar said. He glanced at Sarma again, struck by the fact that he’d never considered that it might be necessary to define something so fundamental to the Andaran honor code. Sarma only looked back at him and shrugged, which was a great deal of help.

“The word ‘shardon’ is from very ancient Andaran,” he continued after a moment. “I’m a little surprised the spellware didn’t translate it, but maybe it couldn’t translate it for someone who didn’t already have enough of the concept to put it into context. Literally, it means ‘shieldling,’ I think. Jaralt?”

“That’s probably the best way to translate it,” Sarma agreed. “There are all kinds of honor obligations tied up in it, though, so it means a lot more than that in practice.”

“That’s true enough!” Ulthar agreed feelingly. Then he drew a deep breath and looked Velvelig straight in the eye once more. “What matters most in this case, though, is that Hundred Olderhan-every single member of the Olderhan family, in fact, including the Duke-is honor bound to die in the defense of his shardonai.”

Velvelig twitched in surprise, then shook himself and fastened on the most burning of the several questions churning through his brain.

“Why in the names of all the gods and demons of Arpathia did he do that after massacring our people? I don’t want to sound like I doubt your word, but that seems like a godsdamned strange thing for a man who’d just butchered an entire party of civilians to do!”

“Trust me, Sir, there are going to be enough Arcanans who wonder exactly the same thing, if not for the same reasons,” Ulthar said, still looking him in the eye. “It’s not something even an old-school Andaran like one of the Olderhans does very often these days. In this case, though, there’s a very specific and special reason Hundred Olderhan declared Shaylar and Jathmar shardonai, Sir. A reason Sarma and his people-all of the Arcanans who launched the attack against Sharona-didn’t know. Something they were lied to about.”

“Lied to?” Namir Velvelig was about as tough-minded as a human being came, but he was beginning to feel decidedly dazed. “Lied to how?”

“Regiment-Captain,” Sarma said quietly, “I was told-we were told-by our superiors that your people initiated the conflict between us, and no one ever told us they were civilians. And on top of that, we were told that Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah, one of our most beloved and respected…scholars was shot and killed by your people after he’d surrendered. That doesn’t excuse a single thing that was done to you, but it does explain why so many of our people were so enraged.”

“And it was also a complete lie-one that had to be deliberate,” Ulthar said flatly. “I know it was a lie, because I was there when your people counterattacked at the swamp portal, and I know Magister Halathyn was killed by friendly fire, by one of our own weapons. And I already told you my senior noncom, Sword Harnak, was there at Toppled Timber when it all fell into the crapper.” He met Velvelig’s fiery stare unflinchingly. “It wasn’t your people who opened fire, it was ours. It was a worthless, gutless excuse for a Second Andaran officer named Shevan Garlath, and he opened fire directly against Hundred Olderhan’s orders. Once he did, and once your people returned fire, there was no way for the Hundred to get a handle on the situation and stop it before almost all of your people were dead. That’s how this whole bloody, senseless thing started, and that’s why Hundred Olderhan took Shaylar and Jathmar under his family’s protection. It was his way of admitting responsibility for what happened, even though Garlath acted against his specific order to stand down, and it was also his way of protecting them from any additional harm. Sword Harnak was there when Sir Jasak faced Thalmayr down when he tried to put Madam Shaylar and her husband in chains as ‘enemy prisoners of war.’ It damned near turned into swordplay, because the Hundred would’ve cut Thalmayr down in a heartbeat if he’d pushed it…and it would have been a better damned thing if he had!”

Ulthar drew a deep breath and shook his head as if to clear it.

“But that’s what really happened, Sir,” he said after a moment, “and I know damned well the Hundred would’ve made a complete and accurate report to Five Hundred Klian at Fort Rycharn. And that means there’s no way in Shartahk’s deepest hell Jaralt and his men could have been told what they were told unless it was deliberate. Somebody-somebody pretty damned high up, I’m afraid; higher than the Five Hundred, anyway-wanted it to have exactly the effect it did have, and I will be damned if I can think of any reason someone would!”

Velvelig’s jaw clenched. Everything Ulthar had just said matched with the Voice report Shaylar had gotten out during the savage fight at Fallen Timbers. Oh, there was no way to know whether or not this Hundred Olderhan really had tried to prevent the bloodshed, but there was no question that the first shot had been fired by a single Arcanan to kill Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl, the very man for whom this fort had been renamed. It could have happened exactly the way Ulthar had just described, and the frustrated fury in the Arcanan’s expression seemed utterly genuine.

But Shaylar and Jathmar alive? That was impossible! Surely it was impossible! Why in the names of every god and devil would the Arcanans have lied about that?

“Why?” he asked the question out loud, even knowing that Ulthar and Sarma were far too junior to be able to answer it. “Why lie to us about that?”

“About what?” Ulthar asked cautiously.

“About the fact that they’re alive!” Velvelig snapped. “Your fucking ‘diplomats’ told us they were both dead!”

“What?” Sarma looked at him blankly. “Told you they were dead?” He shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. Not when we were trying to negotiate some kind of settlement!”

“You’re damned right it doesn’t make any sense,” Velvelig said grimly. “In fact, it was godsdamned stupid if you people ever wanted to put a lid on this! Bad enough the rest of the Chalgyn Consortium team was massacred, but do you have any concept of just how furious the news Shaylar was dead made every living Sharonian? No, of course you don’t! This…this ‘magister’ of yours, this vos Dulainah. You say he was loved by everybody in Arcana?”

“Everybody but the other shakira, who thought he was a traitor for treating garthans like human beings,” Ulthar acknowledged, still cautiously.

“Well, your people had better understand that he couldn’t possibly have been more beloved than Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr. That was probably true even before you attacked her survey team, but after? She was beautiful, she was smart, she was one of the strongest Talents we’ve ever produced, her entire kingdom was proud of her accomplishments, and she was the public face of the entire Portal Authority. Not only that, but she was-she is-a Voice. She sent back every single detail of that fight. She held onto that Voice link, kept sending back an eyewitness account to us while it happened, even while you were blowing every one of her friends into bloody meat around her. Even when her own husband went down, burning alive before her eyes, and she knew he was dead. She was still sending that message when whatever caused her concussion knocked her unconscious-we all thought she’d been killed when that happened-and every single Talented person with even a trace of Mind Speech has Seen that message.”

Ulthar’s expression was sick, but it wasn’t sick enough yet, and Velvelig felt something almost like sadistic pleasure, as if he were somehow paying back all of Arcana for every single Sharonian life which had been destroyed, every drop of Sharonian blood which had been shed.

“You don’t have Talents, just like we don’t have your ‘Gifts,’ so maybe you don’t understand what a Voice truly is. When I say every trace Mind Speaker in Sharona Saw that message, I mean they experienced it with her. They felt every single thing she felt. All of it-sights, sounds, smells, even her thoughts and emotions. They were firsthand witnesses to the entire fight, to the entire fucking massacre, because they were right there inside her head with her while she experienced it! You think your people are pissed off over being lied to about your magister? You have no idea, no frigging concept, of how pissed off and infuriated my entire home universe is, because we absolutely know that every single thing she sent us was completely true! And then, on top of all that, you not only launched this godsdamned attack while we were negotiating for a peaceful settlement but shot every additional Voice you could find along the way?!” He shook his head. “Trust me, what you’ve already done is enough to turn every single nation of Sharona against you, and every one of them sees Shaylar as its own martyr. I don’t know exactly what’s happening back home right this minute, but I don’t need to know any specifics to guarantee you that you can’t even begin to imagine what’s headed your way sometime very soon…assuming it’s not already on its way.”

Ulthar and Sarma stared at each other, expressions horrified. They’d thought they understood how bad the situation was. Now they knew their worst nightmares had fallen dismally short of reality.

They were still standing there, still staring at one another, when Valnar Rohsahk, who’d been sent to fetch Fifty Maisyl and his medical detachment, dashed back to them.

“Sir! Fifty Ulthar!” the recon crystal specialist panted. “Hathnor’s dead and Hundred Thalmayr and Bahbar are both gone!”

* * *

“I’d love to have some idea of what we do now,” Therman Ulthar admitted wearily and looked around the unlikely group at the huge table in the Fort Ghartoun mess hall.

He sat at one end of the table, despite his lowly rank, as the most senior Arcanan present, with Jaralt Sarma to his right and Commander of Fifty Cothar to his left. The very dark-complected Hilmaran cavalry officer looked less than delighted at the situation, but he’d burned his bridges as thoroughly as any of the others when he didn’t join the effort to resist the mutiny. Sorthar Maisyl, Fort Ghartoun’s senior healer, sat to Cothar’s right, and Evarl Harnak and Keraik Nourm, faced Maisyl across the table. Both noncoms looked acutely uncomfortable at finding themselves in an officer’s council, but they’d earned the right to be there and the dragon shit was so deep they deserved the chance to speak up for themselves and the enlisted men who’d followed Ulthar and Sarma into mutiny. Besides, any junior officer who wasn’t a complete fool knew enough to listen to his senior noncommissioned officers’ advice.

Namir Velvelig sat at the far end of the table, flanked by Company-Captain Silkash, his senior surviving officer, and Master-Armsman Hordal Karuk. Silkash looked enormously better than he had, thanks to Maisyl’s healing Gift. The Sharonian surgeon was an Inkaran, from the island off the coast of Shaloma which the Sharonians apparently called Bernith, with sandy hair and blue eyes which were still more than a little bemused from watching Maisyl and his assistants work on the wounded. Tobis Makree was still in the infirmary, although his condition was enormously improved, so Senior-Chief-Armsman Lestym chan Visal sat beside Karuk, and Armsman Thakoh chan Dersain filled out the Sharonian end of the table.

Chan Dersain was both the most junior and the youngest person present, and he looked more than a little nervous. Velvelig had insisted upon his presence, however, and neither Ulthar nor Sarma could fault him for that. The youngster-he had to be at least eight or nine years younger than either of the two fifties-had dark auburn hair and brown eyes. He was from Parnatha, which the Sharonians called Alathia, and his left eye had been blinded in the fight for Fort Ghartoun. It was possible Maisyl would be able to do something about that…but it was also possible the magistron wouldn’t be able to, given how much time had passed. Yet whatever might have happened to his physical vision, chan Dersain had a very useful Talent for an observer. He was what the Sharonians called a “Sifter,” which made him a human lie detector. With him at one end of the table and a sarkolis crystal charged with a verifier spell at the other end, all parties could be satisfied that no one was lying to anyone else.

Gods, I hate to think how the Commandery’s going to react to this one, Ulthar thought almost whimsically. Talk about violating military security-!

“I think a lot of what we decide to do now depends on what you were already planning to do,” Velvelig observed in response to his opening remark.

The regiment-captain was the equivalent of a commander of two thousand, which made him astronomically senior to anyone else at the table. He was also at least ten years older than any of the Arcanan officers, and he spoke with a calm sense of assurance and authority which ought to have been out of place in a prisoner of war. Under the circumstances, Ulthar found that more reassuring than anything else.

“What we’d intended to do, Sir,” he said now, after glancing at Sarma and receiving the other fifty’s nod of agreement, “was to place Hundred Thalmayr under arrest, disarm and secure anyone who opposed our actions, and send a hummer-that’s a messenger bird-back to commander of Five Hundred Klian in Mahritha with a report of what we’d done and a request for orders.”

“A commander of five hundred is-what? The equivalent of one of our battalion-captains?”

“Approximately, yes, Sir.”

“And you thought he’d have the seniority to untangle the mess you were planning to drop into his lap?” Velvelig sounded skeptical, and Ulthar didn’t blame him.

“We didn’t know whether he’d have the seniority or not, Sir,” Sarma put in. “But my uncle served with Five Hundred Klian when they were both squires-that would be under-captains in your Army. He invited me to dinner when I arrived in Fort Rycharn-as the son of an old friend, not one of his junior officers-and my platoon was one of the first ones ordered to move up as reinforcements. I talked to several of the Five Hundred’s men before Two Thousand Harshu or Five Hundred Neshok arrived from Erthos. That’s why I knew something wasn’t right about the intelligence briefings we were given just before the offensive kicked off. I had a lot better idea of what had actually happened at Toppled Timber and at the swamp portal than anyone else in the Expeditionary Force seemed to have. I couldn’t be sure what they were telling us was wrong, but it sure sounded that way. And Five Hundred Klian knows exactly what really happened when all this started, since he personally debriefed Hundred Olderhan on his way up-chain. If anybody would be likely to believe us and be in a position to give us some kind of advice, maybe even some cover, it’d be him.”

“But the fellow in charge of this Expeditionary Force of yours is a commander of two thousand, right?” Velvelig asked. Ulthar nodded, and the Sharonian grunted. “It seems likely to me that, as the CO, he has to have a pretty damned good idea what his intelligence pukes are telling his army. I can’t see anybody who could pull off an operation like this as slickly as he has not knowing that. In fact, I’d be deeply surprised if he wasn’t a part-probably a big part-of the entire story.”

“That’s why we weren’t planning on sending any hummers to him, Sir,” Ulthar agreed, His expression troubled. “Two Thousand Harshu has a high reputation in the Army, and I really don’t want to think he’s part of some organized lie. But like you, I can’t see how anybody could have pulled it off without his at least giving his unofficial blessing.”

“And is this Harshu the sort of fellow who’d come up with something like this all on his own?” Velvelig waved one hand when Ulthar raised his eyebrows at him. “What I mean is, would he try something like this without the approval of whoever’s next up in your chain of command?”

“We don’t know,” Ulthar said frankly. “That’s one thing we hoped Five Hundred Klian could advise us on.”

“Actually,” Commander of Fifty Cothar said, speaking up for the first time, his expression troubled, “I think I might be able to suggest a little something about that, Therman.”

Ulthar looked at Cothar with a surprised expression, and the dark-haired, dark-complected cavalry fifty shrugged.

“You’re married to Fifty Halesak’s sister, aren’t you?” he asked, and Ulthar nodded. “Well, my grandmother’s a garthan, too,” Cothar said with a crooked, rather bitter smile none of the Sharonians understood. Ulthar did, though. He nodded again, more firmly, and Cothar looked down the table at Velvelig.

“The senior Union Army officer out here is Two Thousand mul Gurthak, Regiment-Captain,” he said. “His headquarters are in Erthos-that’s four universes up-chain towards Arcana from here-but he’s responsible for a nine-universe command area reaching back from Mahritha, the universe immediately up-chain from Hells Gate, all the way back to Esthiya. He’s been pulling in every reinforcement he could dig up from the moment the first hummer from Hundred Olderhan reached him, and he could’ve taken command of the AEF himself. In fact, that’s what he should’ve done. But instead, he gave it to Two Thousand Harshu.”

“And?” Velvelig prodded gently when the cavalry officer paused.

“I don’t think he did that because he thought Harshu was better qualified for the command than he was,” Cothar said flatly. “He’s a shakira, and it’s not like one of them to let anyone else have any credit he could claim for himself.”

“Shakira?” Velvelig repeated, and Cothar grimaced.

“They’re a bunch of bigoted bastards, Sir. They come from our continent of Mythal-I think your people call it Ricathia-and they believe anyone who isn’t Gifted is worthless. They’d like to turn all of them into slaves. For that matter, they did turn any Mythalan without a Gift into a slave. People like my grandmother’s family-garthans they call them. They lost the war that broke out back home in Arcana when we first discovered the portals, and the Andarans and Ransarans made them back down on the worst of their bigotry. But they’ve never forgiven that, and if one of them saw a chance to shove a knife into the Army’s back-the Army’s Andaran through and through, Sir-the son-of-a-whore would take it in a heartbeat. Or that’s my opinion, anyway.” He shrugged, his expression bitter. “Only fair to admit I’m prejudiced as all hells where the shakira are concerned because of what they’ve done to my grandmother’s family, but I don’t think that makes me wrong.”

Velvelig glanced back at Ulthar, trying to assimilate the latest overload of information, and the Scout nodded, his own expression just as bleak as Cothar’s.

“Sahrimahn has a point, Sir. My brother-in-law thought pretty much the same thing when he found me here in your brig and found out just how thoroughly he’d been lied to.”

“So are you saying you think this mul Gurthak’s really behind all of this?”

“You said you were told Madam Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband were dead, Sir. That means it was the official position of our diplomats when your diplomats asked about it. There’s only one person out here who’d have the authority to order someone in an official negotiating position to lie about that…and only a complete idiot would lie about it without mul Gurthak’s signing off on it.”

“And it has a sort of shakira stink about it, too,” Fifty Maisyl said, his expression grim. “I’m not related to any Mythalans by blood or marriage, but I don’t have to be to know how frigging arrogant and manipulative they are. Their magisters and magistrons are the most egotistical and condescending bastards in the multiverse, and like Cothar says, anybody who isn’t shakira himself is dirt as far as they’re concerned. Hells, their Book of the Shakira says that in so many words! And it also teaches them that no shakira is under any obligation to deal honestly or honorably with any non-shakira. Anyone outside their own caste is their mortal enemy-potentially, at least-so it’s actually their duty to lie if that helps the shakira, individually or as a group, with their ‘soul growth.’ Most of the shakira I’ve run into really believe that, too.”

“They’re not all that way,” Cothar objected in the voice of a man making himself be fair. “Magister Halythan wasn’t!”

“No,” Maisyl agreed. “But that was the reason so many people loved him so much-because he wasn’t like the rest of the shakira. Because he was one of the most powerful magisters Mythal ever produced, one of the highest of all the shakira, and he’d turned his back on them and walked away from them!”

“I take it these ‘shakira’ aren’t universally beloved?” Velvelig asked dryly.

“No one but a fool trusts a shakira behind him, Sir,” Ulthar said. “By the same token, though, I’ve tried to bear in mind that just because a group of people has a particular reputation, that doesn’t mean everyone who belongs to it deserves the same reputation.”

“That’s very commendable, Fifty,” Velvelig said, “but in this case, it could be a fast way to get you and your friends killed. I don’t know anything about your shakira, but I grew up next door to the Uromathian Empire. Any septman who takes a Uromathian’s word for anything is too stupid to come in out of the snow. Besides, if this mul Gurthak’s the senior officer for this cluster fuck your people’ve produced out here, then I think you’re right that he has to’ve approved the way it’s being conducted. And even if he didn’t do that, if he’s as unscrupulous as you seem to be suggesting, he’s not going to let anything his subordinates might have done splash on him. At the very least, he’ll do his damnedest to sweep any unpleasant little revelations under the rug, and the easiest way for him to do that would be to sweep you under right with them.”

“That may be so, Sir, but we’ve got to find someone we can trust,” Ulthar said, his expression grim. “It takes seven weeks to get a message from here to New Andara. That means my message to my wife won’t get there for another nineteen days. After that, it’d take another six weeks for any message from Duke Garth Showma to come back as far as Mahritha. And that’s for hummers-it’ll take twice that long for him or the Commandery to send an actual investigating team clear out here.”

“I see.”

Velvelig looked at Company-Captain Silkash and Master-Armsman Karuk, and his expression was at least as grim as Ulthar’s. They weren’t accustomed to thinking in communication delays that long, but the Arcanans didn’t have Voices. If Ulthar and the others were right to suspect this mul Gurthak was behind all this, giving him the next best thing to five months to tidy up any inconvenient witnesses before he had to face an inquiry would be a very bad idea.

“All right,” he said after a moment. “I realize I’m not in your chain of command and that I’m an enemy officer, but I think you boys are in a hell of the mess, and my boys are in it right with you. Mind you, if you hadn’t done what you’ve done, I’m pretty sure all my officers and men would’ve been ‘disappeared’ sooner or later by either your Two Thousand Harshu or mul Gurthak, so don’t think I’m ungrateful. But the fact remains that we’re in the same quicksand and sinking fast, so do you want my advice?”

“Yes, Sir,” Ulthar made himself say firmly. Rather more firmly than he actually felt, to be honest.

“All right,” Velvelig said again, and there might have been just a hint of a twinkle in those hard, dark eyes of his. “I don’t think you’re going to like some of it, but as I see it, if you fall back into the hands of Harshu or mul Gurthak before this Duke of yours can get some sort of investigation moving out here-an investigation with teeth and muscle-you’re dead.” He shrugged. “The truth is, you are mutineers, and you and your men did kill other members of your own Army. I know why you did it, and from what you’ve been saying, Duke Garth Showma would not only understand but probably approve. But with five or six months to work on it, the people responsible for this’ll have plenty of time to make sure you’re all neatly dead and buried by the time his investigators arrive, and there’ll be plenty of testimony-most of it honest testimony-to justify the court-martial’s sentence. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Sir,” Ulthar said quietly. “We’d hoped we could confine Thalmayr to his quarters and keep up the appearance that he was still in command until we’d at least had time to get our message to Five Hundred Klian. Now, though…”

He shrugged, and Velvelig nodded, forbearing to mention just how unlikely they’d been to get away with anything of the sort even if Thalmayr and the missing Senior Sword Kalcyr hadn’t stolen unicorns and disappeared into the night.

“We can always hope Thalmayr and the other two will never be heard from again,” he said instead. “Frankly, if they’re headed for your field army and they didn’t have time to grab supplies, that could damned well happen-it’s cold out there at night, and crossing Failcham without enough water could kill just about anyone-but I’m going to assume your light cavalry’s as good as ours. That means Kalcyr can probably keep them alive, and despite your damned dragons, I’m willing to bet there are posts along the way where Thalmayr can resupply and get medical care. And that means his version of what happened’s going to reach Two Thousand Harshu. I don’t think that’s going to make Harshu very happy, do you?”

Ulthar shook his head, and Velvelig smiled faintly.

“So you’re caught between Vaylar and Sankhar-I mean, you’re damned whichever way you jump. Maybe-maybe-Duke Garth Showma will eventually figure out what happened and see to it that whoever’s responsible pays for it, but you won’t be around to see it. I wouldn’t like that after the risk you’ve run for my people. And what I wouldn’t like even more, frankly, would be that my people and I would have to be swept under the rug right along with you. As I see it, that means we’re in this together. I mean really together.”

“What are you suggesting, Sir?” Ulthar asked, but his tone said he already suspected where Velvelig was headed.

“I’m suggesting that in the interests of survival, and of possibly getting the truth into the hands of someone who can actually do something to stop this insanity, your men and mine have to work together. We have to combine forces and abilities-Talents and Gifts-and figure out how less than two hundred men can avoid being run down and captured by your entire Army.”

“And how do we do that?” Ulthar’s voice was edged with bitterness, and Velvelig shrugged.

“I’m an Arpathian, and most of the boys I’ve got left are veterans. We’re used to wilderness and staying alive in it, and I’d bet you ‘Andaran Scouts’ are pretty damned good at that yourselves. I say we integrate our people-I mean really integrate, Fifty Ulthar, into one force-and head for the bush. Go ahead and send your message to Five Hundred Klian. Tell him what you’re doing and why and ask him to send his report up-chain to your Duke, as well. But after you’ve done that, your duty-your duty to your Army, if what you think is happening really is, and certainly to your own men-is to stay alive until the Duke can organize some action in response. The only way you’re going to do that is to be someplace Harshu and mul Gurthak can’t find you.”

“You mean here in Thermyn,” Ulthar said.

“There are places in the Sky Bloods where two hundred men could hide from two hundred thousand men,” Velvelig said.

“But can they hide from aerial reconnaissance?” Sarma asked. The regiment-captain looked at him, and it was the fifty’s turn to shrug. “Don’t forget we have dragons, Sir. For that matter, we’ve got recon gryphons. They can search a lot of area in a very short time.”

“They wouldn’t even have to do that,” Maisyl pointed out. “All they’d have to do is trigger the recovery spells.”

“‘Recovery spells’?” Velvelig repeated, and the magistron nodded unhappily. None of the other Arcanans looked particularly happy either, the Sharonian noticed.

“Every Arcanan soldier is tagged with a recovery spell when he enlists, Sir,” Maisyl said. “It’s intended to help us locate the wounded after a battle…or to recover the dead, anyway. I’m only a journeyman myself, but I could trigger any recovery spell within forty or fifty miles, and my PC would tell me exactly where I had to go to find it after I did. A full magistron like Five Hundred Vaynair, Two Thousand Harshu’s senior healer, could probably trigger recovery spells over as much as two or three hundred miles.”

Velvelig didn’t pretend even to himself that he understood how the process Maisyl had described worked, but he didn’t need to. It was enough to understand that the Arcanans around him literally couldn’t hide from their superiors.

“Isn’t there anything that could block or cut off those spells?” he asked.

“Nothing we’ve ever found.” Maisyl shrugged. “They’re designed to find helpless or unconscious men under the worst possible circumstances, Sir, and they do a damned good job of it.”

“Wonderful,” Master-Armsman Karuk muttered. Maisyl looked at him, and the graying Arpathian noncom grimaced. “There’s been plenty of times I’d’ve loved to have something like that, Master Maisyl. This isn’t one of them.”

“No, it isn’t,” Ulthar agreed. “And I hate to admit it, but it’s not something Jaralt and I thought about when we were having the brainstorm that led up to this.”

“Wait,” Sarma said. The others looked at him, and he held up one hand in a “give-me-time-to-think” gesture, his eyes unfocused in thought. Then he shook himself and looked at Maisyl.

“The recovery spells work through a portal, do they, Sorthar?” he asked intently.

“No. It’s about the only place they don’t work, but then, no spell can be cast across a portal.”

Velvelig didn’t allow himself to raise any eyebrows, but he filed that bit of information quietly away. Interesting that magic didn’t work across a portal threshold any better than a Talent did.

“So to trigger our recovery spells, they’d have to be in the same universe, right?”

“Yes, but what good does that do us? The Expeditionary Force’s in control of every universe between here and Mahritha. If they really want to find us, all they’d have to do is cross through into each of them in turn and activate the spells.”

“True.” Sarma nodded. “But I think there may be one universe this side of Mahritha the Expeditionary Force doesn’t control.”