Authors: David Weber,Linda Evans
Mesaion just hoped it was all going to be worth it. And that they were going to get off more than a few shots per gun before the masonry's solidity or the crude modifications they'd made to the mountings themselves betrayed them.
Now Janaki glanced at the guns, then arched an eyebrow at the artillerist, and Mesaion shrugged.
"They'll have the reach to cover the approaches from this wall, and from the western towers, Your Highness," he pointed out. "But if you're right about where their attack's going to be coming from, the ones on the eastern wall aren't going to be much help."
"Not against ground targets, no," Janaki conceded.
Mesaion opened his mouth, then closed it again. Although he was from New Farnal, not Ternathia, he'd read enough history to know how well the Calirath Talent had served the Empire over the millennia.
Still … dragons? Flying monsters with the heads and wings of eagles and lions' bodies?
"I know it sounds crazy, Company-Captain," Janaki said with a tired smile. "Just humor me."
"If you say so, Your Highness," Mesaion replied after a moment.
"How are the rest of your positions coming along, Sir, if I may ask?"
"They won't be ready before dawn, if that's what you mean, Your Highness. Aside from that, they're coming along pretty well."
"Good, Sir. That's good."
Janaki nodded to Mesaion and stepped closer to the parapet and leaned his elbows on it, gazing out across the town of Salby and up at the looming portal. Chan Skrithik had loaded up all the women and children he could cram onto the available railroad cars and sent them steaming off towards Salym.
Unfortunately, he'd had space for less than eight hundred civilians, and sheltering the rest was going to pack the fort to the bursting point. Still, that would be far better than leaving them to face the oncoming storm unprotected.
Assuming, of course, that they managed to keep the Arcanans' monstrous winged beasts from turning the fort into nothing more than a conveniently concentrated slaughtering pen.
Janaki's mouth tightened as he contemplated the unspeakable casualties which still might all too readily be inflicted upon people for whose protection he and his family were responsible. Then he made himself relax as he looked down at the dust rising from either side of the ribbon of railroad that reached along the valley floor below towards the portal.
Company-Captain Mesaion might have his doubts about some of the artillery deployments Regiment Captain chan Skrithik had ordered on the basis of Platoon-Captain chan Calirath's Glimpse, but that hadn't prevented the artillery officer from getting the guns deployed as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, Fort Salby, despite the thickness of its walls, hadn't really been intended to be defended against an attack by modern heavy weapons. The fighting steps simply weren't deep enough to mount true artillery-especially not artillery on field carriages, instead of fortress carriages-and the gun platforms had never been intended for anything heavier than machine guns, so Mesaion's filed artillery had to be deployed outside the walls, along the foot of the stair-step-like bluff upon which Salby stood, if the guns were going to be used at all.
That explained a lot of the dust Janaki gazed down upon. The gun pits were going to be only a bit deeper than usual, but chan Skrithik-or, rather, Janaki, to be scrupulously honest-had insisted upon the thickest possible overhead cover. Firing a four-inch breech-loader, or one of the three-point-four-inch quick-firers, with a roof of heavy sandbags only a few feet over the gunners' heads promised to be … exciting. But not as "exciting" as things might have been with dragons raining fire or lightning into the gun pits with them.
Janaki wished chan Skrithik had had more field guns available. Even with the light horse guns Sunlord Markan and Windlord Garsal had brought along, though, the regiment-captain had little more than a dozen pieces. He and Janaki had spent an arduous couple of hours bent over the map table, matching terrain against Janaki's fragmentary Glimpses, to pick the best places to put the guns he did have, but neither of them was happy about the total numbers they had to deploy.
The single three-gun section of 4.3-inch howitzers and the nine heavy mortars Mesaion had available could probably take up at least some of the slack. They, however, couldn't be used from positions with overhead cover, which was why they'd been deployed inside the fort itself. From their position on the parade ground they were protected from direct counter-fire and had excellent three-hundred-sixty-degree command, as long as the targets were far enough away for their high-trajectory fire to clear the walls.
Of course, if the Arcanans' dragons got through to the fort … .
Tin roofs, laid over appropriated railroad ties and covered with layered sandbags, were going up all along the fort walls' fighting steps, as well. They weren't as sturdy as Janaki would have preferred, but they were a hells of a lot better than nothing, and they should offer significant protection against plunging dragons' breath. He hoped so, anyway.
Covered rifle pits were also springing up outside the walls, placed to cover the artillerists as well as to protect the ground-level approaches to the fort, and there were quite a few cavalry troopers wielding shovels, picks, and axes out there.
Sunlord Markan and Company-Captain Vargan, in a rare bout of agreement which had probably surprised them even more than it had chan Skrithik, had both looked more than a little affronted at how emphatically Janaki had informed them that Sharonian cavalry had no business at all on the same battlefield as Arcanan cavalry. Actually, they'd been even more affronted because of the Arcanans' lack of modern small arms. Only fools-which neither Markan nor Vargan were, however little they might care for one another-would have even contemplated committing cavalry against dug-in riflemen, machine guns, and field guns, but both Markan and Vargan were cavalry troopers of the old school.
Against crossbows the possibility of one last, anachronistic, glorious charge had suggested itself to both of them, which had turned them into unlikely allies in this one case.
Janaki had used both booted heels to stamp on that notion just as hard as he could. Vargan had accepted the veto with something which might have been described as good grace by a sufficiently charitable observer. Markan, on the other hand, had accepted it with scrupulous, icy courtesy. Of the two, Janaki considerably preferred Vargan's reaction.
Still, the sunlord had agreed that under the circumstances his precious cavalry horses were less important than human lives. Fort Salby's stables had been emptied of their intended occupants, and all of the command's horses had been moved down to the paddocks built around the oasis some several miles east of the fort to make room to pack in still more civilians. The men who might otherwise have ridden those horses were out there behind those shovels, digging in as riflemen, instead. And Janaki had to admit that however much Markan might have longed for one final charge, he'd turned energetically to the task of integrating his troopers into chan Skrithik's defensive plan when that charges was denied him.
Now we just have to see whether or not it does any good, Janaki thought grimly.
"I'd be happier if we could hit them earlier, Sir," Commander of Five Hundred Myr said.
He and Klayrman Toralk stood outside the Operations Tent, looking out across the improvised dragonfield. The transports were beginning to show signs of accumulating fatigue, Toralk noted, and several of the battle dragons were showing fatigue in their own fashion. Which, unfortunately, consisted of being even more irritable than usual.
"I can understand that," Toralk agreed, and he could. But even dragons' eyes needed some light. This Fort Salby had the potential to turn into a nasty handful, and this time the approach was going to be tricky enough all by itself. It was no time for battle dragons and their pilots to fly into hillsides they couldn't quite see in time … or discover that not even dragon eyes had enough light to pick out their targets accurately.
"It's not another damned wooden fort with just a handful of men in it, Sir," Myr pointed out in what Toralk couldn't quite call a wheedling tone. "You've seen the plans."
"Yes, I have," Toralk agreed once again.
The detailed maps of this portal chain which they'd captured at Fort Ghartoun included one of Traisum, and the modified image-interpreting spellware had worked perfectly. They knew precisely where Fort Salby was, and exactly what the terrain around it looked like. They'd even found what one of their prisoners had identified as a map of Fort Salby itself, and "tougher nut" was a grossly inadequate way to describe the difference between it and something like Fort Ghartoun.
Salby's walls were taller, thicker, and stronger. They were also going to be far more resistant to fire, and the buildings inside the fort were made of the same materials, which would make the reds' breath weapons much less effective. If taking those walls and those internal structures turned into any sort of hand-to-hand fight, it was going to be bloody. Very bloody.
One thing the map didn't show was what sort of cellars or underground passages might be integrated into the fort. There had to be some, and they were going to pose problems of their own, however the expeditionary force went about attacking the place.
"Listen, Cerlohs," Toralk said, turning to face his Talon commander fully, "I understand what you're saying. And I agree that our chances of taking them completely by surprise would be better if we hit them in the dark. But your chances of losing a dragon-or two or three of them-on the approach would also be a lot higher."
Myr looked unhappy, but he couldn't really argue that point. The approach route they'd selected took advantage of the mountainous terrain between the portal and their objective, using it to screen and conceal the incoming strike until the very last minute. But while battle dragons were trained for nap-ofthe- earth flight, threading the needle of the valley which would lead them to Fort Salby wasn't something to try in pitch blackness.
"Assuming all your dragons survive the approach," Toralk continued, "you've still got the problem that, as you just pointed out, this is going to be a really hard target, and it's got a garrison at least four or five times as big as anything we've hit so far, with artillery and more of those damned 'machine gun' things of theirs. If they have time to get their heavy weapons into action, we're going to get hurt. Remember what happened to your reds at the swamp portal."
"That's exactly what I am remembering, Sir," Myr replied. "If we hit them fast enough, with enough surprise, we'll be on top of them and knock those weapons out before they even know we're coming.
They won't get a chance to bring those weapons into action at all, and, frankly, I'd like that one hells of a lot better than the alternative!"
"But to do that you have to actually hit them," Toralk pointed out. "And to do that, the dragons have to be able to see them."
Myr started to open his mouth again, but Toralk shook his head.
"I understand what you're saying, Cerlohs. But look at it this way. As far as we can tell, they still haven't gotten any messages out. And because of the captured maps we can finally actually read reliably, we haven't even had to send in a recon flight, so they can't know we're coming."
For a moment, Myr looked as if he might argue that point, but then he grimaced and shook his head.
Although no gryphons had been sent through into Traisum, a very high altitude gryphon had overflown the Sharonians' "railhead," barely three hundred miles up-chain from the ruins of what had been Fort Mosanik. The image interpreters were still trying to make sense out of the take from the recon crystal, still trying to figure out what some of the huge, complicated, awkward-looking machinery was for, but the fact that all those workers were still out there, still working, was the clearest possible proof the Arcanans' presence at Fort Mosanik remained undetected.
"Since they don't know we're coming, anyway, and since these people won't know any more about dragons or gryphons than any of the people we've already hit, you're still going to have what amounts to complete tactical surprise," Toralk continued. "Maybe they'll have a few seconds, even a few minutes, to see you coming, but even if they do, how much good is it going to do them? As far as they know, they're still at peace, so they're going to be maintaining a peacetime routine. It'll take time for them to get from that mindset into putting up any sort of effective resistance. Do you really think they're going to manage to do that, to break their heavy weapons out of storage, and get them into action, before you can get in at least two or three passes with your yellows?"
Myr shook his head, and Toralk snorted.
"I don't think so, either. But for those passes to be effective, you've got to have the light for targeting. If you don't, if you miss on the first pass, then you're likely to have to come back through much heavier fire, and even their rifles may get lucky."
"All right, Sir." Myr smiled crookedly. "You've made your point. For that matter, it was my people who came up with the timing in the first place! Just put it down to opening-night jitters, I suppose."
"Don't think you're the only one feeling them," Toralk said dryly. "Frankly, I'll be happier when we're able to settle in on the defensive instead of advancing further and further into the unknown this way. I know no thrusting, offense-minded Air Force officer is supposed to admit that, especially where a ground-pounder might overhear him. But you know what? I'm feeling sort of lonely all the way out here at the end of our advance."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Company-Captain Silkash tried to conceal his anxiety as the pair of hard-faced Arcanan guards marched him across Fort Ghartoun's parade ground. The surgeon's eyes flitted around busily, taking in everything he could see, and the mind behind those eyes was equally busy.
The Arcanans had decided to use the stables as an improvised holding area for the bulk of their prisoners. Despite the heavy casualties the eagle-lions had inflicted, there were well over four hundred of those prisoners, and finding a place to put them all obviously hadn't been easy. Silkash wouldn't normally have considered a stable a very secure prison, but the Arcanans had come prepared. The surgeon still had no idea how this "magic" of theirs worked, but the gleaming web which had been stretched across every opening in the stable buildings looked depressingly effective. It was clearly visible even in full daylight, and the Arcanans had completely ringed the stable with the glittering tubes of their fireball-throwers as a pointed warning to any Sharonians who might have entertained notions about somehow finding a way through its close-meshed glow.
The officers, on the other hand, had been kept separate from the enlisted and the noncoms. Which, Silkash reflected wryly, had given them an unanticipated opportunity to experience Fort Ghartoun's hospitality from the same perspective as their recent "guests," although they were packed considerably tighter in the cells than their Arcanan POWs had been Of course, his eyes darkened, there had been a few other differences between their own experiences and those of their Arcanan POWs.
Anger smoldered like slow lava down inside the medical officer. There'd been no opportunity for anyone to make any formal reports to him or to Regiment-Captain Velvelig, but there'd been at least some contact with some of the non-officer prisoners. They'd heard what had happened to chan Tergis, and the Voice wasn't the only Sharonian who'd been killed in cold blood after surrendering. To have his men treated that way, especially after Velvelig had been so insistent upon treating his prisoners with respect and dignity, had filled the Arpathian with a white-hot rage. Despite the regiment-captain's self-control, Silkash had literally felt the heat of that anger radiating from the other man.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the brutality had ended. It hadn't tapered off, it had simply stopped, like a locomotive when the steam was turned off. Silkash hoped that indicated that the savagery had never been authorized and had stopped as soon as higher authority learned about it, but he wasn't quite prepared to conclude that that was what had actually happened.
In the meantime, the main body of the invaders had clearly moved on. Which, he thought glumly, probably meant they'd already attacked Fort Mosanik by this time. It still seemed impossible, but if they'd managed to get from Hell's Gate to Fort Ghartoun as quickly as they had … .
His thoughts shifted focus abruptly as his guards pushed him up the steps to the veranda of the office block. They weren't particularly gentle about it, and the manacles holding his hands behind him made him awkward. He thought about registering some sort of protest, then decided that might not be the very smartest thing he could do.
They thrust him into the building, and he found himself being marched down the short hallway to what had been Velvelig's office. They opened the door and shoved him through it, and Silkash's lips tightened involuntarily as he saw Hadrign Thalmayr sitting behind Velvelig's desk.
The two guards withdrew, leaving Silkash standing in front of the desk. Thalmayr pointedly ignored him, keeping his attention on one of the omnipresent crystals these people seemed to take with them everywhere. This particular crystal was filled with floating words and letters in the Arcanan alphabet, and Silkash wondered what Thalmayr was studying so intently in order to emphasize his prisoner's total lack of importance.
Probably a laundry list, the surgeon told himself sourly. He's not smart enough for it to be anything more complicated than that!
He knew the sarcasm was nothing more than a defensive mechanism, the only shield against the uncertainty and fear simmering deep inside him he could come up with under the circumstances. To his surprise, it was rather comforting, anyway.
He stood there for several minutes. Then the door opened again, and Silkash's belly muscles tightened as Platoon-Captain Tobis Makree was shoved through it. This time, the guards didn't withdraw again, either. Instead, they stood back against the wall behind the prisoners, and Silkash's heart sank as he noted the heavy truncheons at their sides.
Thalmayr let the two Sharonians wait for at least another five minutes before he finally looked up from his crystal. Then he leaned back in Velvelig's chair, and his smile was thin and ugly.
"Well, well," he said after a moment. Or, at least, that was what the crystal on his desk said as it translated for him. Somehow, Silkash thought sinkingly, the fact that he was finally able and willing to communicate with them wasn't particularly reassuring.
"So, here we are," he continued after a heartbeat or two. "I've been looking forward to this morning. Do you know why?"
Neither Sharonian answered, and Thalmayr's smile grew even thinner. Then he nodded briefly to the guards, and Silkash cried out involuntarily as a heavy truncheon smashed into his kidneys from behind and the pain hammered him to his knees.
"I asked you a question," Thalmayr said. "Do know why I've been looking forward to this morning?"
Silkash looked up at him through a haze of sudden agony, then grunted as a heavy boot slammed into his ribs. He went down, trying to curl into a protective knot, and the boot crunched into him again. And again.
"No!" he heard Makree shout. "We don't know!"
"Really?" The amusement in Thalmayr's voice was as hungry as it was ugly, but at least the boots stopped hammering Silkash. "I'm astonished," the Arcanan continued. "The two of you, such conscientious 'healers.' So concerned about my well-being, so desperate to save my life, to cure my wounds. I can't believe such perceptive, compassionate people couldn't guess why I've been feeling so much anticipation all morning."
Thalmayr's voice seemed to be coming from a long way a way as Silkash forced himself not to whimper around the waves of pain rolling through him.
"Well," Thalmayr said, and the chair scraped across the floor as he stood, stretching hugely to draw deliberate attention to his restored mobility, "the answer is simple enough. Although I wasn't aware of it at the time, you gentlemen did your very best to help me. It embarrasses me deeply that I didn't realize that at the time. Fortunately, it's been explained to me since, and, I assure you, I'm more grateful for your efforts than I could ever possibly express."
The Arcanan's eyes were ugly, and he slowly and carefully pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves.
"I've thought and thought about how I might be able to express my gratitude to you," he continued as the smoothed the leather across the backs of his hands. "Unfortunately, even with the assistance of my PC
here, I don't think I have the words. So I've decided the best way to tell you-" he held out one gloved hand, and the nearer guard handed him his truncheon "-is to show you."
Hundred Geyrsof's fingers were steady in the control grooves as Graycloud led the 3012th Strike through the portal.
The yellow dragon flew strongly, steadily, sharing his pilot's eagerness as Geyrsof lay stretched out in the cockpit, watching the imagery displayed on his helmet's visor. Ahead of them, the eastern sky glowed with the approach of dawn, but the shadows shrouding the ground below was were still dense enough to make him a tiny bit nervous. The mountains about them weren't all that high, compared to many another, more impressive range, but he'd been impressed-almost awed-by the incredible cliffs his dragons had been forced to climb over just to get here. And if there were taller mountains in the multiverse, the rugged slopes of these mountains were more than solid enough to flatten any dragon careless enough to fly into them.
The mission planners were right to insist on waiting for dawn. The thought ran below the surface of Geyrsof's concentration on the steep, barren, poorly visible mountainsides streaking past beyond Graycloud's wingtips. We probably could have done this with less light … but I wouldn't have enjoyed it!
The old cliche about the dearth of "old, bold pilots" flickered in the back of his brain. Then he felt himself tightening inside as they reached the last waypoint and turned onto their final approach.
There! Geyrsof's eyes narrowed behind his visor as he saw the fort lying ahead of him, exactly where the maps said it should be. He looked through Graycloud's eyes, moving the crosshair while he prepared to climb high enough to gain a clear line of fire onto the fort's parade ground. But then something jabbed at the corner of his attention, and his eyes moved back to the shadows below the fort's wall.
What the hells? That's not supposed to be there … whatever the hells it is. It's-
He was still peering into the shadows, using Graycloud's vision to try to figure out what those dimly visible shapes and scars on the earth were, as the two yellows and their accompanying reds entered the final stretch of their approach valley … and the four Faraika II machine guns dug in on either side, just below the summit, opened fire.
Janaki chan Calirath had been standing on the raised gun platform between the gate bastions with Taleena on his shoulder for the last two hours. He'd stood there, almost motionless, gazing steadily into the west, and Rof chan Skrithik had stood equally silent at his other shoulder, with Senior-Armsman Orek Isia, Fort Salby's senior Flicker, by his side.
The regiment-captain felt … uncomfortable. Which, he reflected, was a pitifully pale word to describe his emotions at this moment. Part of him wished desperately that he'd gone ahead and ordered Janaki to the rear. Another part of him-the part charged with defending twelve hundred civilians, including his own wife-was desperately glad the prince and his Talent were here. And yet another part wondered if Janaki would have gone, even if he'd been ordered to.
And just who the hells would you have used to make him go if he'd refused, Rof? he asked himself wryly, glancing at the Marine standing respectfully behind the two officers. Chief-Armsman chan Braikal looked most unhappy, but chan Skrithik had no doubt whose orders the Marine would have followed if it had come to a choice between him and the Crown Prince of Ternathia.
Besides, when it came right down to it, Rof chan Skrithik was a Ternathian himself. He knew how valuable Janaki's life was. He also recalled the Caliraths' motto … and the quotation attributed to Emperor Halian over fifteen hundred years ago, when he'd rejected all of the arguments in favor of withdrawing from the defense of his Bolakini allies.
"It takes twenty years' training to make an Emperor," Halian had said. "It takes twenty centuries to make an Empire the world can trust."
Janaki chan Calirath understood what his ancestor had said all those centuries ago, chan Skrithik thought.
"What's that?" chan Braikal said suddenly. "There-above the southern hilltop?"
Chan Skrithik couldn't make out what the Marine was talking about, but Janaki answered him. The prince didn't even turn his head to look. He didn't have to … just as chan Skrithik didn't have to look into Janaki's gray eyes to see the shadows moving in their depths.
"It's starting, Chief," the crown prince said quietly.
"Still think it's a stupid place to put a machine gun?!" Paras chan Barsak shouted in Kardan Verais' right ear.
"Fuck, no!" Verais shouted back.
They had to shout, even though their heads were barely a foot apart, and even then they could scarcely hear one another. The cacophonous bellow of four .54-caliber machine guns tended to make it difficult to carry on a conversation. The heavy Faraikas couldn't sustain maximum-rate fire for very long without overheating catastrophically, but they didn't have to, either.
Each of the four machine gun emplacements on each side of the valley poured at least two hundred rounds at the monstrous beasts leading that airborne onslaught, and none of their targets even tried to dodge.
Cerlohs Myr watched in utter horror as both his remaining yellows ran straight into the massed fire of the Sharonian weapons which shouldn't have been there. Geyrsof and his wingman had been concentrating on their assigned target, not looking for machine guns on the tops of mountains a good mile and a half short of the target that didn't know they were coming. Myr had no idea what those guns were doing there. Indeed, he could hardly even find them! The brilliant flames of their muzzle flashes illuminated the shadows wrapped around their positions like chain-lightning, but they were so solidly dug-in, with so many sandbags and so much earth piled on top of their positions, that the muzzle flashes were all he could see.
Well, that and the consequences of those muzzle flashes.
Graycloud and Skykill seemed to stagger in midair. The fire wasn't even coming in from below, where their scales were thickest, and the massive bullets punched through their sides like white-hot awls. One of them-Myr had no idea which-managed to scream in mortal agony, and then both of them went smashing down out of the heavens in bloody, shattered ruin that bounced and skidded onward along the valley floor like toys that flailed broken wings like pitiful, tattered banners.
The three reds behind them went the same way before their pilots could react. The rest of the attack flight responded instinctively, rocketing steeply upward. But the deadly flanking fire tracked them as they climbed, and another red and one of the blacks went down, as well, before they could clear the threat zone.
Myr looked back from his own dragon as Razorwing bounded upward, and saw the broken bodies of seven-seven!-of his precious dragons and their pilots sprawled grotesquely across the valley floor.
The cheers were deafening.
Rof chan Skrithik found himself shouting right along with the rest of his men, bellowing his triumph, and he knew he was shouting even louder because of his reaction to the sheer size of the Arcanans'