Hell Hath No Fury (29 page)

Even as Halesak watched, that single Sharonian brought down a seventh and an eighth gryphon. The fact that the attacking predators were so focused on the targets designated by the combination of their controlling spellware and their own natural viciousness meant they paid the man killing them almost no attention at all. They were so totally committed to neutralizing the barracks, keeping anyone from getting out of them, as their pre-attack command programming required, that they never noticed the single man outside the office block.

"Yirman!" the commander of fifty barked. "Get the gates open! The rest of you, on me!"

Lance Yirman Farl and the two other man assigned to help him went thundering down the nearest stair to the parade ground below. The rest followed Halesak as he went scurrying along the firing step, looking for a clear fiiring angle.

Velvelig brought down yet another gryphon, and his second magazine was empty. He dropped it out of the magazine well and reached into the carrier at his side for a third.

That was when the crossbow bolt hit him.

It slammed into his right hip like an incandescent spike, and he grunted explosively at the raw, brutal stab of agony. The sheer sledgehammer impact was enough to knock him backward, off his feet, and he went down, losing his shotgun as he landed. His left hand went to the stubby, thumb-thick steel shaft driven deep into his pelvis, but his right swept down to his holster and the heavy, familiar weight of his H amp;W revolver fell into his palm.

The monsters swarming around the barracks had noticed him at last, and one of them came straight at him. He brought the revolver up, tracking the incoming nightmare with a rock-steady muzzle, and fired.

The hollow-nosed .46-caliber slug hit the gryphon in the left eye at a range of little more than fifteen feet. The creature's head snapped up under the brutal impact, but momentum kept it coming, and Namir Velvelig's world went black as the plummeting body smashed into him.

Iftar Halesak stood in the center of the captured fort's parade ground, looking about him at the litter of bodies-and body parts-sprawled across the gore-splashed dirt. In some ways, the carnage was even worse than he'd seen at Fort Shaylar and Fort Brithik. The bodies there hadn't been this mangled.

This … shredded. True, many of them had been so burned and shriveled as to no longer look human, but in some ways that had actually lessened the impact. It was hard to think of them as anything which had ever been human, while those killed by the yellows had at least been intact. These bodies were not.

In fact, they looked exactly like what they were-the brutally mutilated corpses of men who had been literally torn to pieces by vicious, ravening predators bigger than most of them had been.

So what? he demanded of himself harshly. Dead is dead, however you get that way. Besides, at least it's pretty quick when a gryphon gets hold of you! And none of these bastards was an old, gentle civilian who got murdered after he'd surrendered.

A stubborn little voice buried deep in the back of his brain stirred uneasily at that last statement. He felt it there, but he crushed it ruthlessly back into silence. Whatever might be happening to surrendered Sharonian POWs, he and his men hadn't had anything to do with it. And none of it could change what the butchers had done to Magister Halathyn.

He watched the dismounted unicorn cavalry troopers spreading out to relieve the initial infantry assault force. He and the other air-dropped infantry had opened the gates and held them until the cavalry could arrive against the disjointed efforts of the dozen or so Sharonians who'd been outside the barracks and somehow evaded destruction by the gryphons. He'd lost three of his own men, but the defenders had been so stunned, so shocked, by what had happened to them that they'd had virtually no unit organization at all. Their counterattacks had been determined, but they'd been launched in ones and twos, without sufficient strength-even with their infantry weapons-to break through the defensive fire of Halesak's arbalests and infantry-dragons.

Most of those who'd tried to retake the gate were just as dead as the ones the gryphons had ripped apart, and-

"Sir! Fifty Halesak!"

Halesak turned and found Yirman Farl pelting across the parade ground towards him.

"What is it?" the officer asked sharply.

"We've found the POWs!" Farl announced excitedly. "One of them's asking for you, Sir!

"For me?" Halesak blinked.

"Yes, Sir!" Farl's smile looked like it was about to split his face in half. "It's Fifty Ulthar!"

"Ulthar?" Halesak repeated sharply. "Where?"

"Over here, Sir!"

Halesak followed the lance quickly through the carnage to what was obviously the fort's brig. There were perhaps a dozen men locked into its cells. The early morning light pouring in through the outer barred windows showed that the cells weren't particularly crowded, and that they'd been provided with ample bedding. That registered peripherally with Halesak, but his attention was locked on the tallish, wiry, red-haired Andaran who had a cell entirely to himself.

"Therman!" Halesak seized his brother-in-law's good hand as Fifty Ulthar reached it through the bars to him. "Gods, man! We thought you were dead!"

"Not quite." Ulthar was paler than ever, Halesak thought, and noticed the awkward way the other man stood, with his left arm in a sling. The shoulder on that side was oddly hunched and swollen, as if there might be multiple layers of bandage under his blouse, and his face was grooved with pain lines which hadn't been there the last time Halesak had seen him.

"I took a hit through the shoulder," Ulthar explained as he saw the direction of Halesak's gaze. "Tore the hell out of it, actually, and these people don't have healers. Not like ours, anyway. They did their best, but …"

He shrugged his good shoulder, and Halesak's jaw tightened.

"If they did, it's the only time they did," he grated, and Ulthar's eyebrows rose.

"What's that mean?" he asked. Halesak looked at him in surprise, and Ulthar smiled crookedly. "I know you better than that, Iftar. It's not like you to leap to conclusions, and I'm a bit at a loss to understand how you'd know anything about how they've been treating us since they captured us."

"I don't have to know about that to know what sort of butchers these people are," Halesak said harshly.

Ulthar's surprise was obvious, and Halesak's lips drew back in a snarl. "The fact that they shot Magister Halathyn down like a dog after he surrendered is all I need to know, Therman!"

"Shot Magister Halathyn?" Ulthar's surprise had segued into confusion. "What're you talking about?

They didn't kill Magister Halathyn!"

"What?!" Halesak stared at him in disbelief. For an instant or two, the ex-garthan's brain simply refused to process information. Then he shook himself violently. "But the Intelligence reports … the briefings

– "

"I'm telling you, they didn't do it," Ulthar said. "They couldn't have. It wasn't one of their weapons-it was one of ours. An infantry-dragon. A lightning-thrower."

"Are you sure, Therman? Are you positive?"

"Damned right I'm sure," Ulthar said. "They allowed us funeral rites when they buried the dead. I saw Magister Halathyn's body with my own eyes, Iftar. He'd been wounded in one arm, probably by one of their hand weapons, during the attack, yes. But it was the lightning that killed him."

"Oh my gods," Halesak whispered, remembering the hatred, the fury which had impelled him. "They said they couldn't confirm it, but …"

"I don't know what 'they' told you," Ulthar said, "but as far as I can tell, these people have treated all of their prisoners-including me, Iftar-with respect. I haven't seen one bit of casual brutality, and their healers-such as they are-have done everything they could for our wounded. Despite the fact that we shot at them first."

"We shot first?" Halesak parroted.

"Of course we did!" Ulthar's voice was suddenly harsh and bitter. "Hundred Olderhan was right. He wanted us pulled back, away from the portal until we could sort out how to manage a peaceful contact, but Hundred Thalmayr had other ideas. I talked to one of the sentries he ordered to open fire on the single cavalry trooper they sent forward to talk to us. To talk to us, Iftar!"

Halesak's mind was working overtime, putting bits and pieces together, remembering the rumors about how Five Hundred Neshok went about "interrogating" captured Sharonians … and remembering that Two Thousand Harshu hadn't done a thing to stop him.

"Listen, Therman," he said quickly, urgently, leaning closer to the bars and keeping his voice low, "can you prove we didn't kill Magister Halathyn?"

"Prove it?" Ulthar's confusion was obvious, and Halesak shook his head hard.

"All our intelligence briefings have … strongly suggested that the Sharonians murdered Magister Halathyn after he surrendered. I didn't have any more reason to question that than anyone else did. Not till now. Now I do, and I have to wonder why they've gone out of their way to 'suggest' to all of us that that's what happened."

Ulthar stared at him for a moment, then grimaced.

"Magister Halathyn's been buried for three months now, Iftar. In a grave in a swamp, without any sort of preservation spell. I don't know if anyone could prove exactly how he died at this point. I know I saw his body, and I think at least one or two of the others did, but I can't prove anything."

"And can anyone else confirm that we shot first?" Halesak pressed.

"I don't know," Ulthar said slowly. "The man I spoke to-Lance Tiris-died shortly after we were captured. Their healers tried, but they couldn't save him."

"Damn," Halesak murmured, and Ulthar cocked his head, blue eyes intense.

"What the hells is going on here, Iftar?"

"Look," Halesak said, even more quietly than before, "I don't know for sure what's going on. We were told they started it both times. And we were told there were those 'unconfirmed reports' that Magister Halathyn was murdered after he surrendered. Plus the rumors-I don't know exactly who started them-

that they shot our wounded after they surrendered."

"That's bullshit!" Ulthar exploded. "That's-"

"Shut up!" Halesak hissed. "Shut up and listen to me!"

Ulthar spluttered to a stop and Halesak drew a deep breath.

"That's better," he said, then paused, trying to decide how to say what needed saying.

"Look," he said again, finally, "you're my sister's husband, my daughter's uncle. I don't want to go home and explain to either of them that something happened to you after I found you alive!"

"But-"

"I'm telling you, we wouldn't have been told what we were told as often as we were told it before this op kicked off unless somebody had decided it was what we needed to be told. And if that was what happened, it fucking worked." He smiled grimly. "Believe me, Therman, you don't want to know the things I've been contemplating since they told me how Magister Halathyn is supposed to have died, and I am sure as hells not alone in that.

"But if I'm right, if it was done on purpose, how do you think they're going to react if you insist on telling them we've all been lied to?"

"If you've been lied to, then it's my duty to tell people the truth." The familiar stubborn look in Ulthar's blue eyes made Halesak's stomach clench painfully, and he fought a sudden urge to seize his less massively built brother-in-law by the front of his uniform blouse and shake some sense into him.

"Godsdamn it, you listen to me this time, Therman Ulthar," he said instead, a whetstone of passion sharpening the edge of his intense voice. "I'm a garthan. My people-your people now, damn it-know all about being lied to and manipulated. Gods, man! Those bastard shakira have been doing it for thousands of years! And given what you've just told me, I smell the mother of all lies. Don't you think for one moment that whoever's responsible for it wouldn't be perfectly willing to 'disappear' a single inconvenient commander of fifty who can't even substantiate his 'preposterous claims.'"thinspace""

"That kind of thing may go on in Mythal," Ulthar said sharply, "but this is the Union Army, godsdamn it!"

"And I'm not telling you to keep your mouth shut forever," Halesak shot back. "I'm telling you to keep your mouth closed and your head down until you know for absolute, fucking certain that the senior officer your telling about it isn't part of a deliberate campaign to change the truth. Do you understand me, Therman? I'm not going home to tell Arylis that you got your stupid self killed playing Andaran honor games with somebody you shouldn't have trusted!"

Ulthar glared at him, but then, slowly, drop by drop, the anger flowed out of his blue eyes to be replaced by something else.

"I'm sorry, Ulthar," Halesak said more gently. "I'm sorrier than I can say. And I agree with you. The truth has to be gotten out eventually. But for that to happen, you have to be alive to do the getting, and I am not going to lose you when I just got you back from the dead. Do you read me on this one?"

Ulthar looked at him for long, long moment of silence. And then, finally, nodded slowly.

"Good," Halesak said quietly, reaching through the bars to squeeze his brother-in-law's sound shoulder.

"Good."

Chapter Twenty-Three

"Well, well, well," Alivar Neshok murmured as he walked down the line of sullen-faced Sharonian prisoners assembled on the captured fort's body-strewn parade ground. Some of them were lightly wounded; all of them had their hands manacled behind them; and if the look of anyone except a combattrained magister could have killed, Neshok would have been a smoldering corpse.

The thought rather amused him, actually.

"Those five," he told Javelin Porath. "And … that one," he added, pointing at an overweight, blue-eyed senior-armsman.

"Yes, Sir!"

Neshok nodded and walked off, hands clasped behind him, whistling softly. He knew he could count on Porath to deliver the selected prisoners suitably.

His whistling faded as the one major flaw in his present sense of satisfaction floated to the top of his mind once again. The fact that his interrogations had revealed the presence of Arcanan POWs here at Fort Ghartoun was going to be a major feather in his cap, since that was the only reason they hadn't been killed right along with their captors instead of being liberated. But the fact that the attack had gone in on the ground to rescue them meant the Intelligence section had gotten in further behind the lead combat elements than they had during the previous operations.

Which meant the fort's badly woundedSharonian commander was out of Neshok's reach … for the moment, at least.

Neshok growled a mental curse at the thought. Commander of Five Hundred Vaynair had the bastard safely squirreled away in the casualty queue over at the field hospital. Personally, Neshok would have preferred to let the son-of-a-bitch die from his wounds-which he certainly would have done, probably fairly quickly, without Gifted healing-as an example to the rest of the prisoners. Or, failing that, Neshok could at least have shot him himself for the same purpose. Vaynair wasn't going to let that happen, though, and Neshok spared another mental curse for the officious Andaran Scouts commander of fifty who'd hustled the wounded Sharonian off to the healers before Neshok could get his hands on him.

Well, I'll just have to do the best I can with what I still have to work with and settle up with the troublemakers later, he told himself. And at least this time around, I've got a lot more people to get answers out of.

He stepped into his chosen interrogation site. It had been a stable, but the unaugmented horses who had been housed here no longer required its stalls. Dragons and gryphons-especially battle dragons and gryphons-had active metabolisms, and horses and mules tasted just as good as cattle and sheep as far as they were concerned.

And watching gryphons and dragons feed was probably an eye-opener for the Sharonians, especially after what the gryphons did to so many of their buddies. He chuckled nastily to himself. That alone ought to loosen a few tongues.

He strolled across the front of the stable, considering the stalls. They'd do as holding cages if he needed them, he decided, while the tack room he'd had cleared would give him the sort of privacy and … intimacy he'd found so effective in the past.

He glanced up as Porath and two other troopers kicked and cuffed their prisoners into the tack room.

"Now, now, Lance Porath," he chided gently, following them inside. "Surely there's no need for all that roughness … yet, at least."

"Yes, Sir. Whatever you say," Porath replied with exactly the right edge of disappointment, and the five hundred shook his head and wagged one finger admonishingly. Then he turned his attention to the Sharonians.

"Now then," he continued, addressing them through his translating PC. "My name is Neshok, Five Hundred Neshok of the Army of the Union of Arcana. You and I are going to become very well acquainted, and in the process, you're going to tell me exactly what I want to know."

None of the Sharonians replied, of course, and Neshok smiled thinly.

"You may not think at this moment that you will," he told them, "but if you do, you're wrong. Trust me, you're wrong."

Folsar chan Tergis looked at the smiling, thin-faced Arcanan and felt a cold stab of terror. This Neshok was radiating his emotions so powerfully that even a half-Deaf Voice-and chan Tergis was anything but half-Deaf-couldn't help picking them up, physical contact or no.

Not any more than he could help realizing that the Arcanan was the next best thing to certifiably insane.

He's enjoying this, chan Tergis thought. Really, really enjoying it. It's not just about power for him; there's something almost erotic about it as far as he's concerned, and he's looking forward to killing.

Triad, how many more of these people are just like him?!

"Now," the smiling lunatic's voice was almost caressing, "suppose one of you tells me who your assigned Voice might be?"

Chan Tergis' blood seemed to freeze in his veins, but his brain raced with feverish speed. Obviously, these people knew a lot more about Sharonian Talents than anyone had thought they might. Which made the reason for the silence from the down-chain Voices suddenly and terrifyingly easy to understand.

In that moment, Folsar chan Tergis could see what was going to happen as clearly as any Calirath, and a fresh thought hammered through him. He hadn't made any secret of Syrail Targal's awakening Talent.

Indeed, he'd been proud of the boy, bragged about the strength of his Voice. If this Neshok was as … thorough as chan Tergis was afraid he might prove, someone who knew about Syrail was going to break and tell him. And when that happened … .

"Syrail!" he Shouted. "Syrail, Listen to me!"

For an instant, there was no response. Then he Saw a flash of vision, someone else's hands scooping sweet feed from a burlap bag for eager, velvet-nosed horses.

"Folsar?" Syrail's Voice came back as the vision disappeared. The boy sounded startled, and more than a little apprehensive. Obviously, more of chan Tergis' side trace emotions were coming through than he'd intended, but maybe that was a good thing. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"It's the Arcanans," chan Tergis Said urgently. "They've taken the fort."

He sent flashing mental images-horrific images, of the striking gryphons, the horned, lynx-eared unicorns, and the terrifyingly enormous dragons-with the speed and completeness possible only for a highly trained Voice. The thirteen-year-old at the other end of the Voice link gasped at the raw brutality of everything he was Seeing and Hearing, and chan Tergis allowed himself a moment of bitter regret for having inflicted that upon him. But someone had to know.

He felt a brief instant of stunned silence, of shock so profound he was afraid the boy was going to withdraw entirely. He wouldn't have blamed Syrail a bit if he had, but the boy was made of sterner stuff than many an adult chan Tergis had known.

"What's happening now?" he Asked after a moment, his Voice amazingly steady. "What do you want me to do?"

"For right now, just hold the link open," chan Tergis Said. "Listen and Watch."

"Do you want me to try and get through the portal? Contact the Failcham relay station?"

"No!" chan Tergis practically Shouted the single word. Then he shook himself mentally, managing somehow to keep his expression from revealing what was going on inside his-and Syrail's-heads. "If they've gotten this far up-chain without anyone getting a warning out, then they've been taking out the Voices as they come," he went on in a calmer, more normal Voice. "That means they know what to look out for, and it probably means they're going to take pains to locate that relay station. If you try to get across the portal and contact anyone, it's just going to draw their attention, and that's the last thing you need to do. Believe me, Syrail."

"All right. " Syrail sounded much more subdued, even frightened, and chan Tergis' jaw tightened as he realized the boy's fear wasn't for himself. He wanted to tell Syrail how proud he was of him, how much the boy had come to mean to him, but there wasn't time. Nor was there really any need-not for two Voices as deeply linked as they were in this moment.

"It's going to be-" chan Tergis began, then broke off as the man who'd introduced himself as Alivar Neshok walked over to stand four feet in front of the line of prisoners.

"It may be," Neshok said reasonably, "that some of you-maybe even all of you, at this point-don't believe me. Perhaps you believe that by keeping your mouths shut you'll manage to deprive us of some critical piece of information. But, you see, there's a problem with that particular line of logic. We've captured quite a few of you this time. Believe me, even if you manage not to tell me something when I ask, someone else will answer the same question before it's over. Someone else always will. It's just a matter of how many people get hurt first."

None of the Sharonians replied, and something inside Neshok purred like a huge, hunting cat.

He clasped his hands behind himself again, letting himself bob gently up and down on the balls of his feet as he studied their expressions. They seemed less shaken than most of his earlier interrogation subjects had been, he decided. That was interesting, something to bear in mind. Apparently seeing their fellows ripped apart by gryphons was a less shattering experience than being strafed with fireballs or strangled in a cloud of gas. Our perhaps it was simply that the casualty count had been so much lower this time?

"Come now," he told them almost caressingly. "Don't pretend you don't understand what I'm telling you.

And think about this. You six have the unfortunate privilege of being the first people I'm going to be asking these questions. There are a lot more where you came from, and, the truth is that you'll be almost as useful as … examples, shall we say, as you'll be as information sources. To be perfectly frank, I don't really care whether you answer my questions or not."

Still no one spoke, and Neshok unclasped his hands to reach out and take the Sharonian revolver from Porath.

"Now to return to my first question," he said with a bright, friendly smile. "Who's your assigned Voice?"

Chan Tergis' spine stiffened. He didn't even have to turn his head to know that none of his fellow prisoners as much as glanced in his direction. All of them stared straight ahead, jaws clenched.

"Perhaps you think I'm joking about the consequences of refusing to answer my questions," the Arcanan said. He raised the H amp;W with the air of a man who knew how to use it and aimed it at the forehead of Petty-Armsman Erkam Varla, the prisoner at the far end of the line. "Trust me," he cocked the hammer,

"I'm not."

Sweat beaded Varla's forehead, but he only pressed his lips more tightly together, and Neshok began to squeeze the trigger. There was no hesitation in him. The emotional aura blasting across the tack room battered chan Tergis like waves driven by a winter gale, and the Voice knew beyond a doubt that the Arcanan was going to fire.

"Stop!"

Neshok paused, one eyebrow arching, and glanced sideways at chan Tergis.

"You had something you wished to say?" he said politely.

"I'm the Voice," chan Tergis said hoarsely.

"No, Folsar!" Syrail Cried in the back of his brain, but chan Tergis' eyes never even flickered from Neshok's face.

"Are you, now?" The Arcanan glanced at the crystal which had been translating. It glowed with a steady blue, and he nodded. "Yes, you are," he said. "How convenient. I expected it was going to take longer to find you."

Chan Tergis said nothing, only looked at him, and Neshok smiled.

"Now, the next question, I suppose, is whether or not you're the only Voice here or in the local settlements. Are you?"

Chan Tergis' mind seemed to be speeding faster than ever. The way the Arcanan had checked his crystal suggested it was somehow capable of telling him whether or not chan Tergis was lying. It must be one of these people's preposterous "spells" which somehow duplicated a Sifter's Talent. But how literalminded was it?

"I'm the only Voice Regiment-Captain Velvelig has," he said in flat, hard tones, and the crystal glowed blue again.

"So you are," Neshok said, and chan Tergis Felt Syrail's whirling emotions from the other end of their link as the boy tasted his own fierce determination to protect him.

"I'm afraid," Neshok continued, "that we've only been able to come up with one way to make certain you Voices don't go chattering away to one another."

Chan Tergis felt his facial muscles tighten, but it was scarcely a surprise. Not given the emotions he'd already sensed from this smiling, purring butcher.

"I'm sure you'll understand," the Arcanan continued, moving the revolver from Varla's forehead to chan Tergis'.

"Folsar!" Syrail Cried. "You can't-"

"There's no more time, Syrail," chan Tergis Said, and his Voice was almost calm. "I'm sorry. Tell your parents. Tell them someone else here at the fort may remember how I've bragged about you, may tell them about you. You've got to run. Hide. Don't let them-"

The blinding brilliance of the muzzle flash silenced his Voice forever.

"I've got the intelligence summaries for your next couple of objectives Klayrman," Two Thousand Harshu told Thousand Toralk that evening. "From what we've been able to put together so far, the next stop-the one in the universe they call 'Karys' should be easy. But the one after that, in 'Traisum'-that one's going to be the hardest nut to crack yet."

"Really, Sir?" Toralk tried very hard not to let his distaste for the way that "intelligence summary" had been assembled show. Harshu obviously saw it anyway, and gave his head an impatient shake.

"I know how you feel about Neshok, Klayrman. And, to be honest, it's time I started reining him in. In fact, I have started. I've removed our prisoners from his control, and I've approved Five Hundred Vaynair's refusal to release the wounded to him."

"May I ask why, Sir?" Toralk inquired very carefully.

"Mostly because we're starting to hit more heavily settled universes, according to what we've already learned. Or we will be shortly, at any rate. Fort Mosanik in Karys isn't much. Your yellows should be able to deal with it without any trouble. But somewhere on the other side of it, we're going to encounter this 'railroad' of theirs. Apparently they've got quite a large work crew pushing it down-chain as quickly as they can, and it's undoubtedly got one of these Voices of its own assigned to it.