Hell Hath No Fury (37 page)

Their speed and strength had to be conserved for the final dash to their objective. But that was all right.

The gryphons wouldn't attack immediately. The compulsion spells directing their strike had been carefully structured to give Urlan's cavalry time to get into position.

The heavy horses' larger size meant each of them could carry not one rider, but two, and two of Urlan's hundred-and-twenty-strong companies were configured as standard heavy dragoons. Each horse bore a two-man saddle, with the rear rider armed not with a saber or lance but with a cutdown version of an infantry-dragon. It was much shorter ranged than the infantry weapon, but longer ranged than any arbalest and far more deadly.

Each horse in Commander Of One Hundred Orkal Kiliron's Charlie Company, on the other hand, carried only a standard saddle, instead of the two-man heavy dragoon version. In place of the normal second rider, a smaller version of the standard dragon cargo pod had been harnessed to each horse. Its comparatively diminutive size was small enough for an augmented horse to handle without too much trouble, but still big enough to carry a full twelve-man infantry squad. A quarter of those pods were occupied by Gifted engineering specialists; the others contained over a thousand picked infantry. And one basis for their selection was that at least half of them had at least some Gift.

Enough, at any rate, for them to be armed with daggerstones for the assault.

"Activate the glamour," Urlan said to the Gifted commander of fifty at his side.

"Yes, Sir."

"That's it."

Janaki's voice was suddenly calm, almost quiet, and chan Skrithik jerked his eyes away from the small dots, circling above Fort Salby with a hungry eagerness he could sense even from here. They seemed very close, those dots, but if they were the size the prince had described, then they were much higher than they looked.

"I beg your pardon, Your Highness?"

"I See now," Janaki said, and turned his back on the circling dots to face the regiment-captain with a strangely serene little smile. "I didn't think there was going to be enough time."

"Your Highness?" Something about Janaki's voice, the way his body language had somehow relaxed, worried chan Skrithik.

"Listen." Janaki put his hands on chan Skrithik's shoulders, pulling the older man so close to him their foreheads almost touched. "The eagle-lions are going to attack in just a few minutes. They'll come in from the west. When they do, we'll see the dragons coming in behind them."

The prince's words came quickly, with a sort of distant urgency. Chan Skrithik might have been fooled by their quietness, but he saw something behind the ghosts in those gray eyes. He saw ferocious purpose, determination, and his own eyes narrowed with the intensity of his concentration on what Janaki was saying.

"They'll have infantry on the dragons. Some of the dragons will be spitting fire or lightning. They'll have more infantry on lines, ready to drop over the parapet. They'll use the eagle-lions to try to suppress our fire. But the dragons aren't the real threat. They're a diversion, Regiment-Captain. They want us looking at them while the real attack comes in from behind us, from the east. Do you understand? The dragons and their infantry are the diversion, not the cavalry. Do you understand?"

Chan Skrithik nodded, and Janaki looked past him for a moment at Senior-Armsman Isia.

"Warn Company-Captain Mesaion. The cavalry have some sort of … spell. It's like a smokescreen, but different. It'll look more like a mirage-like heat shimmer. But the cavalry will be behind it. Most of the men won't be able to see through it, but chan Forcal can. He's got to get Mesaion's first rounds on target

– on the ranks around their standard. It's a wind sock, like one of the Arpathian dragon-standards. That's where their commander is-where the spell will be coming from. Do understand?"

Isia darted a look at chan Skrithik. The regiment-captain nodded, and the Flicker swallowed hard, then produced a jerky nod of his own.

"Yes. Yes, Your Highness!"

Janaki's head swiveled back to chan Skrithik while Isia's frenzied pencil started scribbling the message to Mesaion. The black dots overhead were beginning to widen their circle. Chan Skrithik was vaguely aware of them, sensed the way they were straining at some immaterial leash, but most of his attention was focused on Janaki chan Calirath and the prophetic fire burning in his eyes.

"They've got those fire-throwers on some of the horses. And some of the others are towing carriers-

floating carriers, like hot-air balloons-with more infantry in them. They'll try to get the carriers in close enough to assault the parapet-use them like scaling ladders. And if they can't get over the wall, they'll go through it. They've got people with spells that can open breaches-like blasting charges, but different. They'll have to reach the wall to actually use them. They'll try for the dead spot at the southeast corner, where the fire will cover them and none of the machine guns or pedestal guns will bear. You have to get men with grenades over there now. Do you understand?"

Chan Skrithik felt himself nodding again as Janaki repeated the three-word question like some sort of mantra.

"See to it, Chief," he said to chan Braikal. The Marine stared at him for one instant, then turned almost agonized eyes to Janaki. He hesitated a heartbeat longer, but the crown prince gave him a smile and twitched his head, confirming chan Skrithik's order, and chan Braikal thundered off, shouting for the other members of his platoon.

"Some of the infantry have the same sort of smaller fire-throwers," Janaki went on, the machine-gun words coming with almost impossible clarity yet simultaneously seeming to trip and fall over one another. "If the ones with the blasting charges touch the wall, they'll blow through it. The fire-throwers have less range than a revolver, but they'll kill anyone they hit and each of them is good for several shots. And they've got other people with them-people with spells like a Lifter's, only better. They can actually Lift people up over the parapet without using ladders or the carriers if they can get close enough."

The circling dots were plunging downward now. Rifles began to crack. The surviving machine guns on the parapet began to fire, as well, but the gryphons were smaller, faster, and far more agile targets. The men Janaki had insisted on arming with the more rapidly firing Model 7s were going to be far more effective than riflemen, but the shotguns were also much shorter ranged. The men armed with them had to wait for the gryphons to come to them.

"Remember, Sir." Janaki's eyes burned into Roth chan Skrithik's soul, and his hands slid down from the regiment-captain's shoulders to grip the front of his uniform tunic. "Remember-the dragons are the diversion. They won't risk them in close. They've lost too many. It's the cavalry. You've got to stop the cavalry. If you stop it, they'll break off the attack. They won't take additional losses-not this far from home. But if the cavalry gets through, gets inside the walls, it's over. You can't-"

He broke off suddenly, and his eyes dropped abruptly back into focus. They were suddenly once again the clear, gray eyes of a young man, not the eyes of an avatar of legends.

"It's here."

His voice had changed, too. It was almost-almost-normal again.

"Good luck, Sir," he said, and his hands locked on chan Skrithik's tunic. The regiment-captain's eyes just had time to begin to widen, and then Janaki picked him bodily up and threw him off the gun platform.

Chan Skrithik landed so hard, so awkwardly, he broke the bones in his left forearm into gravel.

He scarcely noticed the white-hot agony of those snapping, shattered bones. It was so small, so unimportant, in comparison.

Janaki chan Calirath never even turned his head. He was still looking at chan Skrithik when the gryphon he'd never seen with his physical eyes at all hit him from behind and killed him instantly.

Chapter Thirty

The gryphons hit Fort Salby like a tidal wave of ferocity wrapped up in feathers, talons, and fur.

The men on the fort's walls had never seen anything like them. But then, they'd never seen anything like quite a lot of what they were seeing this day. And if they'd never seen them before, at least they'd had them described to them by officers who had been briefed by Crown Prince Janaki. Those briefings defused much of the terror of the unknown. They didn't magically banish fear, didn't make dragons or gryphons any less monstrous, any less unnatural. But they set aside the paralyzing shock complete surprise might have achieved, and the men of Fort Salby were angry.

They knew about the negotiations. They knew the Crown Prince was right, that the Arcanans must have been carefully planning their offensive the entire time they'd been talking about negotiations and peaceful settlements. They'd drawn their own conclusions about what must have happened to the Voices down-chain from Traisum, and they knew they'd been supposed to be taken by surprise themselves and massacred in what they thought was peacetime.

They'd already smashed the first attack. The price might have been high, but they'd knocked those stupendous dragons out of the air, proven the Arcanans' magical creatures were indeed mortal, however wondrous they might appear. And so, as the gryphons swept down upon them, swinging wide to avoid overflying the infantry positions west of the fort, they were ready.

Rifle fire flamed across the parapet. The heavy machine guns which had wreaked such havoc against the dragons couldn't traverse quickly enough to engage the smaller, fleeter gryphons effectively, and even the rifles were less than completely effective. As good as the Model 10 was, it was still a bolt-action rifle engaging flying targets coming in at speeds of well over two hundred miles an hour.

Here and there, a gryphon's wings suddenly faltered, a beast fell out of the oncoming cloud of killers, but the rest kept coming.

The overhead cover which had been erected to protect the firing steps from fireballs proved at least partly effective against gryphons, as well. Some of the beasts flung themselves upon the sandbags, ripping at them, shredding them to get at the fragile human bodies beneath them. Others hurled themselves straight into the faces of the defenders, coming over the parapet, swarming into the gap between the overhead and the tops of the fort's walls. Still others swept past the parapets entirely, stooping on the unprotected men on the fort parade ground and in the gun pits.

Fourteen-inch bayonets turned rifles into short spears, thrusting frantically as two-foot beaks snapped like headsmen's axes. Here and there, wicked talons gripped rifles, snatching them aside, and everywhere men screamed in agony as bellies were opened, throats were ripped out, heads simply disappeared.

Revolvers cracked and shotguns began to bellow, thundering in rapid fire, spitting buckshot into tawnyhided killers, and gryphons shrieked in agony of their own. It was all one mad, swirling sea of chaos.

Rof chan Skrithik saw the gryphon which had killed his prince. The creature flung back its head, bloody beak gaping in a scream of triumph, and then a feathered thunderbolt struck from above. Janaki's falcon hurled itself into the monster's face with a hissing shriek of pure fury, and the guillotine beak snapped ferociously as its small tormentor ripped bleeding furrows across its face and blinded one eye.

Taleena distracted the gryphon just long enough for chan Skrithik to drag out his revolver. The regimentcaptain was aware of his prince, bleeding under the gryphon's ferocious talons, and he bared his teeth in savage hatred as his thumb cocked the hammer and the heavy weapon roared.

The gryphon screamed in fresh pain as the heavy bullet smashed into it. It turned away from Taleena, back towards chan Skrithik, and the regiment-captain shot it again. And again!

It went down at last with the fourth shot, and chan Skrithik felt hands pulling him back to his feet.

It was Senior-Armsman Isia, bleeding from a deep cut in his right cheek, his eyes wild.

"Sir! Are you all right, Sir?"

Chan Skrithik stared at the Flicker for two or three eternal heartbeats. All right? How could he ever be

'all right' again? He ripped his eyes away from Isia, and they burned with unshed tears as he looked down at the dead young man at his feet. But then he shook himself. His prince had died to give him his final orders, and his lips drew back.

"Message!" he barked at Isia.

"Yes, Sir!"

Isia dragged out his notepad, holding it to one side to avoid bleeding on it.

"I want Platoon-Captain chan Noth over at the southeastern tower-now! He's to do whatever it takes to hold that wall!"

"Yes, Sir!"

Isia's pencil slashed at the pad. He stuffed the hastily written order into a message canister and Flicked it on its way.

"Message to Sunlord Markan," chan Skrithik continued without a break. "Begin: Expect heavy cavalry attack from southeast. Expect fire-throwers. Imperative the enemy not reach the fort's walls with blasting spells."

He thought about adding specific instructions, but there was no need. Uromathian or not, Markan was smart and experienced. He'd know what to do.

Isia Flicked that message to its destination, as well, then took chan Skrithik's revolver and quickly replaced the expended rounds for the suddenly one-handed regiment-captain. Chan Skrithik thanked him absently and reholstered the weapon, then started down the steps from the parapet. He hated leaving that vantage point-and hated, almost as much, the feeling that he was somehow abandoning his prince-but with Janaki dead, he needed access to chan Forcal.

Movement jarred the shattered bones in his left forearm. A part of him almost welcomed the physical pain as a distraction from the anguish within, but he couldn't afford to be distracted by either of them.

And so he pushed both of them aside, cradling his broken arm with his good one in an effort to at least minimize the hurt and trying not to think about what another fall might do to that arm while he ran down the steps faster than he really should have.

All about him he heard screams, rifle shots, shotguns, and pistols. Bodies and pieces of men's bodies fell from the walls. Sprays of blood and feathers seemed to be everywhere, and gryphons-most dead, some only wounded and even more dangerous for that-littered the parade ground.

Chan Skrithik let go of his left arm and drew his revolver once more as he and Isia headed out across that parade ground. Twice, wounded gryphons slashed at him with beaks or talons, and twice the heavy H amp;W revolver roared in his hand.

Then, ahead of him, he saw Company-Captain Mesaion. The New Farnalian company-captain had moved down to the ground level gun pits and he'd brought his Distance Viewer with him.

"I understand what His Highness said, Sir," Wesiar chan Forcal protested. "I'm trying. But they just godsdamned disappeared and I can't get them ba-"

The Distance Viewer broke off. For an instant, his eyes were distant, almost confused looking. And then, abruptly, they snapped back into focus.

"I've got them again," he said flat-voiced. "I See the standard, too. Gods, those are big fucking horses!"

"Screw their size!" Lorvam Mesaion snapped. "Give me a target!"

"Yes, Sir."

Chan Forcal closed his eyes once more, concentrating on his Talent. Distance Viewers were critical to accurate indirect artillery fire, but chan Forcal had a special Talent, and Mesaion had never been gladder that the chief-armsman had wound up assigned to Fort Salby. Men with his Talent were more often snapped up by the Navy, because chan Forcal was a predictive Distance Viewer. His particular Talent included just a touch of Precognition. The ability to project a moving target's position ever so briefly in advance.

"Six thousand yards," chan Forcal said suddenly, sharply. "One-seven-three degrees. Two minutes."

"Six thousand yards!" Mesaion bellowed. "One-seven-three degrees! Move, godsdamn you!"

"Bugler!"

"Sir?"

"Blow 'At the Trot'!"

"Yes, Sir!"

Five Hundred Urlan heard the urgent, golden notes flaring from the bell-mouthed bugle, and the Seventh Zydors sprang ponderously into a trot. Their horses might be slower than unicorns, but despite their size, the massive beasts were still faster than the finest unaugmented thoroughbred ever foaled On the other hand, they still had over three miles to go.

"Bugler, blow 'Canter'!"

"Now!" chan Forcal shouted, and seven four-and-a-half-inch mortars coughed as one.

There was no warning.

One instant, the Seventh Zydor Heavy Dragoons were thundering forward, moving up from a trot to a hard canter in perfect order under the protection of their cloaking glamour. The next, thunderbolts came dropping out of the heavens without any warning at all.

Five Hundred Urlan swore savagely as the mortar bombs exploded. They clustered around his command standard with enough perverse accuracy to make a man actually believe in demons after all, and the sunbaked, stony earth was almost as hard as a paved street. The incoming mortar rounds scarcely dented it, and there was nothing to absorb the force of the explosions … or the deadly, whirling splinters those explosions threw out in all directions. Horses and men screamed as white-hot steel fragments drove into fragile flesh and bone. Half a dozen of the huge steeds went down, shrieking like tortured women as legs broke or whirling steel knives opened their bellies.

"Spread out! Skirmish order!" Urlan bellowed. Once again, the bugle's notes flared golden, and his men responded like the elite troopers they were. They opened their ranks, dispersing to deny their enemies a compact, concentrated target.

Urlan watched the evolution. The confines of the valley meant they couldn't open their ranks as widely as he would have preferred, but at least they were no longer riding knee-to-knee. He bared his teeth as more of those infernal explosions raked the Zydors, and then he swore again, hideously, as he realized the commander of fifty responsible for the glamour was down.

"There they are!" Lorash chan Braikal snapped.

He didn't know how the Arcanans had pulled it off. Still, if the bastards had dragons, why shouldn't they have cloaks of invisibility, as well?

The thought flickered through the back of his mind, but whatever it was and however it had worked, it obviously hadn't fooled Company-Captain Mesaion's Distance Viewer. The explosions sprouting amongst the oncoming cavalry looked like flame-cored toadstools, and he saw the huge horses going down, spilling their riders.

But not as many of them as I should see, something muttered in the back of his brain. Vothan, those things must be tough!

The howitzers were firing, as well, dropping their lighter shells in among the heavy mortar rounds, but they weren't going to stop that many pissed-off cavalrymen with less than a dozen tubes.

"Rifles!" he shouted as the range raced downward, and the platoon's Model 10s began to crack.

More of Urlan's men and horses went down as the Sharonian shoulder weapons-the "rifles"-opened fire from atop the wall. But at least the briefing from the recon crystal had been accurate. The tower that markedtheir objective was still on fire, and none of the machine guns and whatever-the-hells those other rapidfire weapons had been could bear on them from this angle. The rifle fire would be bad enough, but

– 

"Fire!"

Sunlord Markan heard the young commander of horse's shout as the company of dismounted cavalry Markan had snatched away from the entrenched positions west of Fort Salby rounded the fort's flank.

Accuracy would have been too much to expect out of them after their hard run, and they'd lost at least ten or twelve men to stray, rampaging eagle-lions. But even unaimed fire from a hundred and twenty rifles had to get the other side's attention.

Of course, Markan thought distantly, getting heavy cavalry's attention might not be the very best thing dispersed infantry could do when it's outnumbered three or four to one . . in the open.

"Mother Jambakol!"

Five Hundred Urlan spat the filthy curse as still more rifles began to fire, this time from ground level.

His head whipped around, and his eyes narrowed as he saw the infantrymen. They were firing furiously, although with nowhere near the accuracy of the men on top of the wall.

For a moment, Urlan considered sending one of his dragoon companies to scatter them, but he quickly decided against it. They weren't hitting very many of his own men, and when the Zydors reached their objective, the fort itself would cover them against these new Sharonians' fire. They'd lose more men charging them than they would simply galloping straight into the waiting cover.

Chief-Armsman chan Braikal watched Arcanans dropping under his platoon's aimed fire. The mortar fire continued to rake their ranks, as well, but it wasn't going to be enough to keep them from reaching the wall, and they were going to run in under the mortars' effective arc of fire when they got a bit closer. His Marines weren't scoring as many hits as they should have been, either. Was that from excitement and too much adrenaline, he wondered? Or could it be that the bastards had some other spell protecting them?

Not something that could make them invisible, perhaps, but something that made them harder to hit?

He didn't know, and it didn't matter. What mattered was that at least some of them were going to make it to the base of the wall after all, and Prince Janaki and Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik were counting on chan Braikal to keep them out of Fort Salby.

"Chan Yaran!"

"Yes, Chief?" Petty-Armsman Rokal chan Yaran, whose promotion had come through less than two weeks before, replied.

"Get your grenade party ready!"

"Yes, Chief!"

Windlord Garsal had suddenly become the senior officer in the infantry and artillery positions protecting the western approaches to Fort Salby. It was not, he discovered, a position he particularly wanted.

Unfortunately, it was his.